Goodyear

A copy of the letter I sent to Goodyear...

To whom it may concern,

On Nov. 1st, 2008 at about 9:45 am I went to your Goodyear Auto Service Center # 8773 located at 10931 N. De Anza Cupertino, CA 95014. The purpose of this visit was to see about a getting a warranty replacement set of Fortera Silent Armour tires I had purchased at Just Tires. Since Just Tires was no longer in business I was told I needed to go to a Goodyear owned store. The tires have a 70, 000 mile warranty and had worn out after 37, 000 miles.

I had made one visit to this store on Thursday, October 30th only to be told I had to come back when the store manager was working in order to facilitate the warranty replacement.

When I returned Saturday morning I waited in line as the store manager, Israr Refai, was already assisting someone ahead of me. While I was waiting Mr. Refai answered a couple of phone calls including one that took about 6-8 minutes while he looked up pricing for the person on the phone. This went on while the lady he was supposed to be helping waited for him to return to assisting her. She was understandably upset at this treatment. There were several other staff members nearby but no one except the two guys working with customers at the counter answered any of the calls. That seems like poor management and was certainly poor customer service.

When I finally got my turn with Mr. Refai he took two more calls. Both were brief. He looked at my tires and agreed they were evenly and sufficiently worn to warrant a pro-rated replacement set. He told me they had to pick up the tires at a nearby warehouse so it would take 2 - 2-1/2 hours to do that and complete the tire mounting. I said I understood and that I would be in the waiting area.

At the two hour mark I walked out and I saw my truck had not been moved yet. I asked Mr. Refai why nothing had been done yet. He was very dismissive and said the tires had just got here and they would start soon. I do not believe he had sent anyone to pick them up yet since I saw the store truck leave about two minutes later. It had not been moved up to that point.

At the three hour mark they finally started working on my truck. About 15 minutes after they started the tech came to me and said the plastic decorative center caps were very tight. They were cracked already so I told him to go ahead and knock them out with a mallet even if they break and to discard them. He promptly did that.

At the four hour mark another tech came and told me that one of the new tires had a factory defect in the sidewall and that it was unusable. They would not be able to get a new tire until Monday or Tuesday. As this point I am very frustrated with the whole operation but I have no other options.

At the five hour mark I approached Mr. Refai and asked him why this is taking so long. I reminded him that he told me 2 - 2-1/2 hours to complete the work. He was very condescending to me and said it was because they had to go get the tires. I reminded him that he had said that was why it would take the 2 - 2-1/2 hours to complete the work in the first place. He got very agitated and said it was because of the center caps. I told him I saw that it took about two minutes to knock them out. Once again I asked what could possibly take 5 hours to do this work? He then said rudely, "I don't want to talk to you anymore" and walked away into the back office area. I was flabbergasted. He came out about 3 minutes later. I was still waiting for his answer. I asked again about what is taking so long. He once again said it was because they had to go get the tires. I once again reminded him they had the tires at the two hour mark and it still took three hours after that. He walked away again and said "I can't talk to you". At that point an sales manager named Rob Glick came over and said my truck was finally ready, more than 5 hours later.

The sales manager Rob actually at least said he was sorry it took so long and sorry that I would have to come back again for the last tire. The store manager, Israr Refai, never once apologized for the inconvenience or tried in any way to be helpful or courteous. He was, in fact, extremely rude and very unprofessional. It was bad enough to be so disappointed in your products performance (which I am now stuck with using due to the warranty) but the manager of that store, Mr. Refai, provided the worst customer service I have ever had. A simple "I am sorry this has taken so long" from Mr. Refai at some point during that five hours of waiting would have gone a long way.

Perhaps Goodyear should offer customer service training to Mr. Refai and all store managers. He serves as a poor reflection on the Goodyear name.

I went back tonight, November 3rd for the last tire. That took exactly 1 hour. All in all I had to wait 6 hours for a 2 - 2-1/2 job of mounting four tires. Had Mr. Refai been upfront about the real length of time I could've arranged for someone to pick me up.