Buywheelstoday review: Defective tires

I purchased a set of Kenda Klever Mud Terrain tires from Buy Wheels Today. I read a lot of reviews, both on various off-road forums and on Amazon where Buy Wheels Today does a lot of business. Befor the purchase, I spoke to Adam at the company. He seemed very responsive, knowledgable and confident in the tires. I bought direct from the company to save on sales tax. My price was $624 with free shipping, which I thought represented an great value.

I got the tires and took them to a local shop to get them mounted and balanced. I drive a 4wd 3/4 ton truck and I got large tires (265/70/17). On the short ride home the ride seemed fine, but it was definitely different. Since then i have noticed a distinct vibration. The next day I took a closer look at the tires and noticed an incredible number of weights, in various locations on the inside and outside of the rim, had to be used to balance the tires. One had 12 ounces of weights in 6 different spots on the wheel! I have never seen anything like this, so I took the truck back to the shop and asked a more experienced tech to repeat the work. They did, but with the same result. I thought I had a "shop" problem, so I took the truck to another shop. They communicated much more clearly, and took me in the back to see the real problem. They mounted a tire on the balancer and spun it and I could actually see the wobble in the tire! They said it was obvious there was a problem with the mould, and that they could not and would not work on the tire.

I was disappointed, but based on my good experience talking to with Adam at Buy Wheels Today, I was optimistic that I would reach a good solution. After all, the tires look great and I wanted to resolve things. Adam was easy to contact, and terrific about getting back to me. My problem is that his "solution" stinks. His suggestion is for me to buy more tires from him, and then pay to ship my defective tires back to him. After considerable back and forth over the phone and email the best he came up with was offering me his rate for shipping.

I already paid $60 to get my tires mounted. If I were to do it again I would use a different local shop that communicates better at the rate of $115. It will cost me nearly $200 to ship the tires. So, I will have to spend another $315 just to get another set of potentially defective tires! What if things go wrong, do I start over and effectively double the cost of the tires? Needless to say, I'm not taking that route. It's pretty ridiculous to spend half the purchase price of your tires to return them. Now I'm left wondering if its worth it to return these tires for my money back. If i do, I have to hope that they deem the tires defective, because in the meantime i will have bought replacements. I think I'm going to take my chances with these defective tires and get what use I can out of them.

Buy Wheels Today has mostly good rating and satisfied customers on Amazon. So, most of their purchases must go smoothly. However, I know the measure of a company to be how they handle their customers when things go badly. Things went badly for me, and I'm left holding the bag! Even though it would have cost me more, I wish I had bought these on Amazon or Ebay so that I could post my review and let others know...