the ballad of the black rubber bullshit (part ii)

as i explained to kramer about an hour ago, despite what some of you might believe, i can actually tell when i’m droning on…

…grant you, i might feel i’m doing it minutes (or hours?) after you’ve felt it, but i still feel it.

and in the first part of this bit i could tell it was getting a bit long winded, so we broke it up. plus, i had to have the actual conclusion and that took time. so where was we?

oh yeah, the fucking tire pressure monitors chiming since they only detected three tires while we waited.

the new tires DID arrive on saturday, august 17th, but due to my work schedule i wasn’t able to get em mounted and “balanced” until monday, august 19th. all done up, except for this one little problem:

yep – that’s a slight bubble in the sidewall. the guys that put em on said it was slight enough that it might “round itself out” if i drove on em for a day or two. a day or two later it was pretty obvious it wouldn’t, and i reached out to the place i got em, which have a five day “no hassle” return policy provided the tires are returned with all the original stickers from the place on them (i’d saved em) AND they hadn’t been driven on, which obviously this one had.

i wrote them an email including the pic above on august 19th so they could see there was structural damage to the tire, thinking they’d just tell me to junk it and they’d refund. i also found another perfect match for the tire for $200, made an offer of $150, and it was accepted, so that was on order. it was slated to arrive august 24th (that saturday). so i went BACK to the tire place on august 21st only to pull the damaged tire so i could ship it back AND put the extra tire i still had on (since only one had failed and i bought a pair i still had a mismatched single). this did NOT happen because the owner’s son wasn’t in and he was, per the owner, the only one i should trust not to fuck up my rims (which he still scratched a bit), so i just rolled home and said, “fuck this” for the next day or two.

the first surprise came that afternoon, on the 21st, when they wrote back saying they could “probably” take the tire back, even though it had been driven on, since it was damaged – but i WOULD need to send it back. so now THAT was a thing i’d have to deal with.

the second surprise came friday morning, august 23rd. the tire that has showed no movement for several days on my postal tracker was suddenly at the lockhart post office. knowing they HATE dealing with these on their route, i shot down there at 6:30am, rang the back bell, and retrieved my tire. i then got to go get it mounted, and came back to firestone to get it balanced, in between cleaning the damaged one up and getting it labeled for return. then we started wait number two to see if i’d get the refund i honestly deserved…which hit my account one week later on august 30th.

and that had fucking BETTER be the end of that, damn it!

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