Town Fair Tire

[Mickle]

This might be common knowledge but as a warning to other newbies like me...  TFT (nashua NH in particular) is a rip-off! I was shopping the internet for tires and found that they will ?beat? any internet price. So I got quote and sure enough they beat  my best price (only by $20 but every little bit helps). what they didnt mention is that they'll try and tack on an extra $30 to your mount/balance price (totalling over $100!) making the $20 savings pointless since most will mount/balance for 50-70. I obviously left with my un-mounted tires and had them put on elsewhere. Had i ordered them from the same place as my wheels I'd have saved another 50 in the bottom line because they'd have mounted /balance for free. Oh yeah, all this is after they messed up my order and got me rain tires and made me wait another week before the right ones came in. I will say if you must go to TFT in that area go to the one in amherst they are much better. You've been warned!

[JWBrockman]

Did you realize that mount/balance package includes a front wheel alignment? It's actually a decent price when you consider that, cheaper than most places charge for a M+B+Align anyway. If your car requires a 4 wheel alignment it's another $25 or so, but that's still just about market price for the work. And if you don't want them to do the install, you may notice they do offer the option of just picking up the tires at the store for the price quoted. I just sent my parents to Town Fair for a set of Dunlop SP Sport Signatures on their Mazda5 this week, they beat the Discount Tire price by about $10, and got the tires to our store and on the car within two days. Pretty decent in my book.

[Mickle]

yes if you are looking for an alignment it is included just hope that nothing is stuck under there because they wont touch it if there is. plus i just had the alignment set to my specifications less than a month ago. had i just been looking for a set of tires it would have been all the same since i would have to pay someone to put them on. however since i had already bought wheels from DTD i should have gotten the tires there as well to get the whole deal, but i thought i was getting a deal at TFT until they said the mount/balance would be $26 each admittedly because of the price match.  as i said before it is mainly a problem with the particular store. they are not all as sly, especially since the amherst TFT took care of it for me without overcharging just because they matched a price.

[neilschelly]

I just had the Nashua TFT do an alignment on my E36 and was very happy with their service and time to completion. As with any place, your mileage may vary.
-N

[JWBrockman]

Nothing sly about it IMO, it's all spelled out pretty explicitly on their website. Their service saved my dad a few bucks, a few days, and a lot of hassle compared to ordering from TR/DTD online like they normally do.

[Mickle]

I guess all I am saying is that I could have gotten a better deal orderering the whole package from DTD.  That would have cost me $1587 delivered.  The way I did it with the wheels from DTD and the tires from TFT with the mounting price that Nashua gave me would have totalled $1657.80 including the price match, but since I walked out without mounting them and got them put on in Amherst I really ended up paying a total of $1625.80.  Now had I bought my wheels with TFT also they may have saved me some but I dont know if it would have offset the almost $40 price difference. I only spent $130 for each wheel and they are 17s so I dont forsee a huge savings available there.  Even if it had made up the difference it still would have been less hassel when TFT tried to give me Ecsta W710s instead of V710s!  When I saw the tires I told them that they where not the right ones and the response I got was "how do you know?" !  Im new to racing but I know what I ordered.  All said and done; I have the wheels/tires ready for this weekend and its going to be sunny so I can actually use them and Im happy about that!

[pzahornasky]

Well there are a couple of mistakes in there  but you're new so keep this in mind for the next time:

1.  Tire Rack spends a tremendous amount of money directy supporting the SCCA Solo program (Northeast Divisionals on Aug 8/9 is sponsored by TR.)  Many of their workers actively compete in the program on both the local and National level.  TFT spends 0.  I also guarantee you that one TR salesperson has more tire knowledge than the entire TFT staff at one store.  I bet that more than one person at TFT was wondering (at least privately) why you were ordering 'bald' tires.

2.  Tires can be sent to Chang at FunHondas in Maynard, who does a lot to support the local Solo program and is very reasonable on his mounting and balancing.

[Crxkswap]

I must defend Town Fair, here is a little story that happened to me a few years ago which I sent to town fair (and Sullivan Tire who I will never deal with again) and I have been a customer since:

I was selling my car (BMW M3 Convertible) and the buyer was flying up from Virginia.  The day before I cleaned it up and around 4:30PM took it down to fill it with gas.  I noticed a nail in the tire and instantly panicked.  I called one of your competitors (Sullivan) to try and get it fixed on an emergency basis (I have bought all my tires from them in the past).  They said no way, and they were booked the next morning.  In essence, “go away and don’t bother us”.  Well the next morning I called my BMW dealer and he recommended you guys in (Town Fair Nashua NH).  I called and they said come on in.  I got instant service from both the sales person and the mechanic.  They repaired and balanced my tire in 45 minutes, and BLOW ME AWAY, did not charge me a single cent.  In addition, your facility people made me feel comfortable with handling my 19” alloy rims on a high performance car.  When they were done the mechanic drove the car around out front and off I went to the airport. 

They will alway match prices, but you have to ask.  They can order most anything and it comes in a couple of days.  I will say that they are not as careful with fancy alloy rims as I would like, but then, I have had those experiences with Tire Rack as well ( bad balancing on an expensive set of rims and tires). 

I guess none are perfect.

[pzahornasky]

For the record, I wasn't slamming TFT.  I am sure that most of their locations do very good work.  Having been a tire chain store manager for 7 years I know that there are good and bad for every type.

I'm just pointing out that there are companies and people that support what we do and deserve at least very strong consideration.

I buy all my tires from Tire Rack and have all my mounting and balancing done at FunHondas, despite the fact that I live 40 minutes away AND my brother-in-law is the manager of the Sears Auto Center in Salem, NH, only 20 minutes away from me.

[dhcernese]

For the record, I wasn't slamming TFT.  I am sure that most of their locations do very good work.  Having been a tire chain store manager for 7 years I know that there are good and bad for every type.

I'm just pointing out that there are companies and people that support what we do and deserve at least very strong consideration.

I buy all my tires from Tire Rack and have all my mounting and balancing done at FunHondas, despite the fact that I live 40 minutes away AND my brother-in-law is the manager of the Sears Auto Center in Salem, NH, only 20 minutes away from me.

..ditto, except for the brother-in-law part 

[Mickle]

I must defend Town Fair, here is a little story that happened to me a few years ago which I sent to town fair (and Sullivan Tire who I will never deal with again) and I have been a customer since:

I was selling my car (BMW M3 Convertible) and the buyer was flying up from Virginia.  The day before I cleaned it up and around 4:30PM took it down to fill it with gas.  I noticed a nail in the tire and instantly panicked.  I called one of your competitors (Sullivan) to try and get it fixed on an emergency basis (I have bought all my tires from them in the past).  They said no way, and they were booked the next morning.  In essence, “go away and don’t bother us”. 

I totally agree with you on the Sullivan thing, Ive never had anyone try to take advantage of me worse than them!  They tried to charge me $50 per wheel of mount and balance years ago.  Then they charged me for a four wheel alignment that they did not complete (I got my money back on that before I left but it took calls to the regional manager)!

[gogrannygo]

I totally agree with you on the Sullivan thing, Ive never had anyone try to take advantage of me worse than them! 

i only tried dealing with S. once -- walked away really, really annoyed at the lies related to trying to sell me the tire they wanted to sell rather than the one i wanted to buy [what does a woman know about tires, anyway -- right?!]
from what i know, the problem with TFT is that it's a crapshoot whether you get helped by someone who cares about what they're doing or not -- last year, i actually saw an STI arrive at a college autox club event with 4 new tires just put on at TFT -- turned out that one of tires was a different size from the other 3 -- someone who used to work there told me that some of them had figured out how to produce an alignment printout / report without actually bothering to do the alignment.  stuff like this can't happen all the time, or they'd go out of business, but still ...
athena