Firestone Complete Auto Care review: Customer service 4

A whirlwind of bad experiences at 3 different stores! It's taken me a while to finally submit this because it's such a long series of events, but here we go.

I've been loyal to Firestone since I bought my Sonata in May of 2016. I even purchased the life-time alignment package and followed all of their recommendations on when to come in for rotations, oil changes, air filter replacements, etc. I put brand new Firestone tires on the car when it hit 48, 000 miles as the originals were starting to go, and I purchased the 60, 000 mile warranty tires. Fast forward two years, my car is at 76, 000 miles and I'm about to move from Albuquerque, NM to San Antonio, TX. I take my car in for a tune-up prior to the move and am told my tires look bad and I should think about replacing them before I make the drive to Texas. Hold up - these were 60, 000 mile tires that hadn't even hit the halfway point of their life span!

I'd like to back up and say, Firestone has continually over-quoted me when I drop my car off for routine maintenance. I got in the habit of taking my dad with me to pick it up, because they will ALWAYS *suddenly* drop the quoted price and offer "discounts" when a male is present with me. I'm used to this and it's honestly the reason I always take him with me for pickups; Firestone has always been pretty sexist in trying to rip off women who "don't know cars, " at least in Albuquerque. It's happened to me, my mother, and my sister-in-law. So when this employee tried to tell me my tires were already worn out I wasn't that surprised, and assumed it was a bogus recommendation because he was profiling me as clueless. He had the audacity to suggest that I must not have kept up with my rotations and alignments and it caused the tires to ware too quickly. I had to ask him to pull up my car's history in the Firestone system to see that FIRESTONE had completed ALL my alignments and rotations about every 4, 000 miles, per their own recommendation. So not only had I kept up with regular maintenance after all, but if the maintenance really was the cause of the degrading tires, then Firestone was doing a bad job with the maintenance on my car, or maybe even lying about what they did to it. So I came back with my dad, and suddenly was told that yes, my car would make it to Texas just fine, but I should think about new tires within 5k miles or so.

Fast forward 4 months, I've been working from home and barely driven my car so haven't had to do anything to it. I am about to head home for Christmas, so I take my car in to a new Firestone in San Antonio (on San Pedro Ave) and tell them I'm getting ready to drive 1600 miles. They told me, your tires look bad and are ready to be replaced. I asked the employee how that could be and he tried to tell me they had 50, 000 miles on them, and were therefore pretty close. I literally had to explain the math to this grown man that no, 78, 000-48, 000 = 30, 000. These tires should have only been at their halfway point. I let them do my rotation/alignment/oil change and they STRONGLY urged me to get another alignment in Albuquerque before I drove back. Since I have the lifetime alignment package, I took their recommendation and made an appointment at the Firestone I had always visited in Albuquerque for December 26, 2020. I get the appointment reminder email and everything. So I show up that morning at 9:00 am and find the door locked, nothing posted, I haven't been contacted, and waited 30 minutes before finally finding a number to call. No answer, Voicemail Box was full. I finally called another Firestone store just to ask if they had any intel or openings and they told me the store on Montgomery was closed for Covid. Why was I not contacted to reschedule or cancel? I wasn't the only person waiting in the parking lot, either. So the store on Paseo was able to squeak me in a few hours later, thankfully, since I had to leave for Texas the next day.

So, Store #3 also recommended that my tires be replaced. At this point I thought, okay, 3 different stores saying my tires don't look good, maybe they really are waring out too quickly (again only at the halfway point of their advertised lifespan). Seeing as my tires only made it to the halfway point of the Firestone 60, 000 mile guarantee, they told me they'd prorate the price of 4 tires... for a total of $370.00. Are you kidding?! That's barely less than what I paid for the four tires in the first place! That is NOT a prorated price of 50%, it's about a 20% discount. Huge ripoff, again assuming they're over charging me as a female.

The more I think about it, the only way my tires would have degraded that quickly is if the alignments and rotations that Firestone had been "giving" me every ~4, 000 miles were bogus. Was this intentional? Did they give me shoddy alignments because I'm a "loyal to Firestone" customer and a "clueless female" who would inevitably buy more tires if they recommended it? Or are they actually just not good at their job? If you look back at my vehicle's Firestone history, there actually are quite a few times that I went in for an alignment, and came back within 2 weeks to get it corrected because the car was pulling worse than it was before the alignment. I can only assume my tires wore too quickly because Firestone wasn't giving me proper alignments/rotations. Whether this was done intentionally or not, I'll never know.

Needless to say, Firestone is losing my business. I got a second opinion on my tires and yes, they did not make it anywhere close to the 60, 000 mile guarantee, but seeing as I did all the maintenance that Firestone recommended, WHEN they recommended it, then tried to charge me almost full price to replace their tires that already let me down, you can be sure I'll be going somewhere else to replace them.

Firestone at
14710 Wallisville Rd Houston, TX [protected]
Is ripping off people. They charge d my son $2000.00 for brackets arms and mounts. Two weeks later brakes locking up. They told him it was his AVS acting up and he needed to pay $300 to get it fixed. I swear they are sabotaging vehicles to get more money. WICKED! They are making a bad name for this place. Don't think I'll be using my Firestone card anymore.

Tokunbo Shomide
I went to Firestone Complete Auto Care Store# 000035 at 12098 new castle avenue, New Castle, DE 19720 on Monday, June 14, 2021 to have a Standard Break Service Rear/Front change of pads and replacement of Break Rear Rotors. I Also asked them to fixed my Air Conditioner on my 2006 Volvo XC90 V8. After driving the car for 2 days I noticed that the Air Conditioner was not working properly, it was just blowing more air instead of air Conditioner at the highest pick. I took the car back and met the Manager Black African, He was not eager and very reluctant to check this car. It was after some minutes back and forth he himself went outside to check the car, he was saying the same that Volvo is a foreign car that they don't know why the Air Conditioner was not working well that it was just blowing air. I also noticed again that after few days from the Firestone shop when I start the car the car was a little bit reluctant to function properly and when I turned on the Air conditioner, I can hear the shaking of the car/engine. My name is Tokunbo Shomide [protected]. I need help in fixing this car. I paid over $530 for this service and what did I show fir it? If the Manager continue to do this type of behavior. Firestone will continue to loose good customers etc...

I took my Mothers car to Firestone in Hallandale Beach Florida. They told us they were putting in a new battery ($249) and air filter at no charge, They charged us 1000 for a bunch of add ons. My Mom is 86 and our mistake is that we didn't review the estimate before the work was done. They gave us an air filter and we just had a oil change with all filters changed 1 month ago. I called and he said I will give you your battery back and your money but at that point I didn't trust them to return the correct battery. I will never go back and its too bad because I just got a credit card and was going to us them. I will visit the Hollywood Fl Firestone and hope they are more honest. Thank you