Amongst the companies that I selected for my bad business list, Kost Tire truly stands out. Indeed, a company that can accomplish such lousy work and stay in business deserves special, shameful, recognition. There are five things that they screwed up on so spectaularly well that they deserve their own segments:
It is worth while to note that they managed to screw all of these up when I went there once, for a simple brake job.
First, one would think that a business such as "Kost Tire", which has the word tire right in its name, would understand how to put tires onto a car. Obviously, to do a brake job, the tires must be removed from the car. Upon completion of said brake job, the tires need to be put back onto said car. Indeed, they don't need to be re-mounted or re-balanced, just simply taken down and then placed back on.
But yet it appears that this was a complicated and vexing operation for Kost Tire to do correctly. On my car, I was running directional tires - BFGoodrich Traction T/A. A directional tire, therefore, has to be installed with respect to the left or right side of the car. When I brought my car to them, all four tires were correctly installed. Yet, when I picked up my car, only two were running in the correct direction. There are arrows on the sidewall that plainly indicate which way the tire needs to rotate. And indeed, if they had simply put the tires from the driver's side in one pile, and the passenger side in another, they wouldn't have been able to mix them up. Yet somehow they found a way.
First, I'll agree that power tools are good. Air impact tools are also good. Many times for car maintenance, the torque that is only possible from an impact wrench is necessary. However, impact wrenches can also be implements of destruction in the hands of the uninitiated. Too much torque can round off heads, strip bolts, and even injure the user of the tool.
Or in this case, too much torque can damage hardware and necessitate another repair. When I arrived home, after Kost had already closed for the evening, and found my backwards tires, I was going to fix that mistake myself. I gathered up my rachet and sockets and proceeded to attempt to remove the lug nuts from the backwards-running tires. I found that I was unable to loosen one of the lugs using my usual 12" racthet handle, so I then reached for my 18" flex handle for better, non-racheting leverage, and still the lug did not budge. I then placed a 4-foot-long pipe on the end of the handle, and rounded off the lug nut.
The next day, I had to take the car to a real mechanic to have the lug removed with a tap & die set. This much torque for a lug nut is beyond excessive. It not only would have prevented me from being able to change a flat tire should the need arise, but it was actually in the range of likely causing damage to the lug studs themselves. Lug studs will overextend and fatigue mroe rapidly when they are subjected to this much torque.
Another thing that I noticed when I was dealing with the incorrectly-placed tires was that one wheel was fastened with only 4 lugs. This car uses 5 lugs for each wheel. When I looked at the wheel with only 4 lugs, I noticed that one lug stud was stripped too severely to accept a lug nut.
I actually do not suspect that the stripped lug stud was their fault. I do believe there is a good chance that it was stripped before I came to them, and even before my 1,000 mile drive to move from Minnesota to Syracuse. However, what I do hold them at fault for is not mentioning it. They attached a wheel with onyl 4 lugs and sent me on the road without telling me about it, offering to fix it, or even noting it on the work order. This looks like customer disregard to me.
When I brought my car to Kost Tire, after having had difficulties getting the front calipers to loosen so I could install new pads, I had already installed one new set of ceramic pads. The OEM spec for my car is for ceramic pads. I even told the person at Kost Tire this when I brought my car in, and their only response was "we won't use your parts". I can even understand this statement, in most cases.
But the important fact is what pads went into my car. When I picked it up, they installed semi-metallic pads, onto the three wheels that I had not worked on. Really, this is two problems in one - first, they used inferior pads than the spec, and second, they sent a car on the road with ceramic pads on one wheel and semi-metallic pads on the other three. This is not a good way to ensure good braking performance.
It is pretty hard to move a car without driving it. Not impossible, but pretty hard. And being as they did put down a paper mat over my floor mat, I am pretty sure they did drive my car to get it onto the lift. Starting the car would have lit the "ABS check" lamp on the dash. This light had been lit ever since I bought the car a year prior. However, it appears that they either did not notice the bright red light on the dash, or did not care about it, as this received the same attention as the stripped lug stud - none. They did not ask if I wanted them to look into it when I was on the phone with them, nor did they make any mention of it on the work order.
Side note - I later purchased a code reader for this car (~$40). The light was lit because of a faulty sensor, that I later replaced myself.