Tire Rants: Costco Nampa ID

(Nampa, ID USA)

We took our 2007 Honda CR-V in to have the "tires rotated and balanced". We were told that the car would be ready in 1 1/2 hours. After 2 hours, we were standing at the window watching them work on the car. They rotated the tires but only balanced two of the tires. When we pointed out to the technician that only two of the tires had been balanced, he indicated it is their standard practice to only balance the two front tires. The customer has to ask to have the other two balanced.

We pointed out to them that was the stupidest thing that we had ever heard of. And that of course we wanted all 4 tires balanced. They made a big deal of how much trouble we were causing them by having to balance the other two tires.

We watched as they proceeded to remove the old weights and reapply new weights--obviously the other two tires needed to be rebalanced.

We have been trying to figure out why the Michelin tires that we buy for this car don't last as long as they are guaranteed for. Even with the "guarantee" we still end up spending a considerable amount of money to replace them because they don't last very many miles.

Now we know why--If Costco routinely only balances half the tires, it makes sense that the other half wear out so quickly.