Originally Posted By: Cressida
Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Cooper, to some on here, is a 2nd rate tire company....
Agree, indeed they are.
Since my local Hercules dealer would not offer any adjustment on a tire that developed a sidewall bump I no longer use or recommend Hercules tires. The company will not stand behind their tire line.
Cressida,
I hope you understand I am not picking on you here, but your post has a number of fallacies that need to be corrected - ones that others share.
The first is that tire manufacturers don't have much control of what happens at the retail level. It isn't like a car dealer where there is a franchise that can be pulled. It's more like a wholesale market where tire dealers can pick and choose which brands of tires they carry - in whole or in part. The most a tire manufacturer can do is refuse to ship product DIRECTLY - but tire dealers can still buy from a wholesaler.
Further, many tire dealers don't do warranty adjustments as a matter of policy. I've never understood this, but some just don't.
Then there is the issue of brands. Some brands are owned by an independent group and have tires manufactured to their specs. In these cases, the tire manufacturer isn't usually involved in the warranty process at all, but some arrangements allow the owner of the brand to return tires to the tire manufacturer for credit. This can be a really complicated arrangement and most of the time the brand handles its own warranty just to keep things simple with the tire manufacturer completely in the dark about how this is handled.
But some brands are *in House* brands - and in these cases, the warranty may or may not be handled through the tire manufacturer. It depends on the terms of the arrangement.
And lastly is the issue to the adjustment itself. Many people feel that anytime they have a problem with a product, they should get some sort of compensation. Some warranties are written this way - BUT - most tire warranties are written to exclude road hazard damage - and there are many ways a tire can be damaged by outside forces, some not very obvious. It's these that cause most of the headaches and bad feelings.
I hope this helps explain things.