Why I do business with Direct Tire

[debgeisler]

No, they are not paying me to write this.

No, they don't give me free tires.

Yes, they have a wonderful business ethic, great employees, solid products, and an amazingly positive attitude about their relationships with their customers.

I first started doing business with Direct Tire's Peabody, Massachusetts store two cars ago. They sold me some tires, installed them, and replaced one when it gave up the ghost (because of a nail). About 10.5 years ago, when I bought the Audi S4, we started doing even more business.

The Audi's tire adventures

The S4 was a great car. It was an all-wheel-drive sport wagon with more torque than anything that sensible has any business having. About 9 months after I bought the car, I went to Direct Tire to buy a second set of rims (one inch down from the sport wheels that came standard) and snow tires.

Everything I'd seen about the S4 said "get snows; drop a size." With snow tires, the car was a winter *machine*...never a bobble, climbed hills covered with snow, always brought me home safely on Boston-area highways in the winter.

The deal at Direct Tire was that I paid them $85 a season, and they stored my tires and rims while the other set was on. When it was time for a change, they would install the seasonable wheels and balance them at no additional charge.

Over the decade, Direct Tire also did other wheel and tire work for me (3 sets of high-performance tires, a broken rim, and various flats). Once, they drove down to a church parking lot, got my spare on, followed us while we drove to the shop, repaired the dead tire, and then told me there was no charge for all of that because it was still under warranty. This is why I brought the car to them time and time again.

Eventually, Mike got snows for his car, too, after my burbling that all-season radials are really three-season radials. (I'm a convert for snow tires.)

The Bimmer's winter boots

The folks at Direct Tire are gearheads. They loved my old car, and they loved that I loved it. When I decided to sell the Audi and buy the BMW (taking European delivery), they all got a serious hard charge out of it. They even did some of the work on the Audi to get it ready for the sale (because I'd become quite disenchanted with Audi service by then).

So, yesterday afternoon I had some time, and I called Direct Tire to see about stopping by and picking up snows for the BMW. (Yes, today's forecast snow helped prod me in that direction, but it was always a foregone conclusion that the BMW would be getting winter boots.) Not only could I buy them, but they had some solid mid-range snows in stock, so I waited while they installed the snows.

Bob took care of me this time. Rich, who is retiring, and I chatted about his upcoming move to Florida. But every single employee of Direct Tire with whom I have ever dealt has been absolutely rock solid. Every one of the guys on the desk has taken good care of me. I cannot imagine buying tires and getting non-dealership repairs anywhere else.

How good are they?

Today, I got a call from Bob. "Deb, I'm very sorry. When I was storing your regular tires, I saw they were run-flats. That hadn't dawned on me. If you want, I can swap out the new snows for run-flats, but they are more expensive."

Mike had pointed out the run-flat issue last night, and I'd thought "Oh, poop." Figured to get some fix-a-flat and pray. But here was Bob, telling me it was still possible to upgrade the snows to Blizzaks. Yes, I'll pay the additional per tire (but that's likely to be money well spent the first time the car picks up a nail in January).

But let's think this through: Bob noticed; he called me; he will upgrade the tires; he apologized and said he should have caught it yesterday, and that it was his job to notice things like this.

Direct Tire has, once again, illustrated why they are the only place I'll go for tires. Thank you, gentlemen.

Comments

w00t!

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

WooT!

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

This is how I feel about Les Schwab Tires here in the Pacific NW. I wish I could find service like theirs for everything, frankly.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

You know, the name of that company sounds vaguely familiar...and then I realized it was from Charles Schwab, to which it's probably not related. :-)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Great story. I don't need to switch between tire sets (at least not yet; we'll see how bad the winters are here in Fernley), but I was similarly impressed with America's Tire in Fremont when they offered to fix for free the flat tire from our travel trailer even though they didn't sell me the trailer tire in the first place and were already doing an included-in-the-original-price tire rotation on my van, so I wasn't paying them any money at all that day. And furthermore, I had told them that I probably was relocating and thus might never spend money at their location ever again. They still treated me well and pointed out that there's an America's Tire in Reno/Sparks and that they'd be happy if I took my business there.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

I remember you writing about your experience, and it struck me at the time that they sounded like Direct Tire West. :-) If every business with which we dealt was like that, I suspect there would be no "Occupy" movement, and American business would be the envy of the world.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Darn right. And I think the company I work for has a similar "we're all in this together" ethos. During the worst of the economic downturn, there were pay cuts at Con-way (our sister company) and no raises at Menlo, our 401(k) matches were cut to the minimums, and our time-off accruals were cut "temporarily." The top officials of the company took a bigger pay cut than the line staff, instead of getting Big Raises for "increasing productivity by cutting workers' salaries." The company gave clear, achievable productivity goals and said, "When we reach those goals, the pay-cuts, 401(k) match, and time-off cuts (and the top brass salary cuts) will be rescinded. We hit those goals last year. At other companies, they probably would have given the leadership the money back but retained the line cuts. Not here: everything went as stated, and morale was better for the whole time. Now that's more like it.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

You are blessed.

Our fine institution of higher learning was outed several years ago for paying the university president more than any other university president in the country...he was only #2 the next year.

That was the year they told us that there would be no raises, because of belt-tightening.

The president has since left (but since his contract ran until 2013, he was undoubtedly bought out), there are still more high-level administrators we don't need and can't afford, we haven't gotten raises in three years, and they just fired a bunch of people in, if rumor is to be credited, a fairly appalling manner.

Yeah, Kevin, I'm wicked jealous of you.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I do remind myself that it's a good company to work for when foolish demands or ill-though-out-scheduling or absurd client requests oblige me to work round-the-clock to meet a deadline. And the fact that it does seem highly likely that they'll let me relocate permanently to Fernley. (Although I admit to not having made the formal request. With so much time left to run on my apartment lease in Fremont, I continue to ease my supervisor into my "working from Fernley" the way I used to "work from Oregon."

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

It is nice to find a place that knows their business. I've been similarly happy with Sullivan.