So last week I had a bit of an adventure...
I drove to work like I normally do, but when I arrived I parked and needed to get some things out of the passenger side of my car. ( not something that happens often ) This is what I found.....
There was no loss of pressure, so no alarms went of in the car. I honestly didnt know how long it had been that way since I never go to the passenger side of the car.
So, with just 10,541 miles on the tires I was hoping for some sort of waranty, I got some advise from a friend and he said either have roadside assistance tow it to BMW or try another tire company that sells Goodyear tires. There is a Discount Tire within walking distance of where I work so I went there.
They go out and look at my tire and tell me is probably due to a pothole or road hazzard. So now I'm thinking I'm screwed. We go back inside and I was actually working with the Store Manager so he wanted to look up Goodyears waranty policy. He happened to find that any Runflat tires less than a year old purchased before November 12th 2012 were covered under a road hazzard waranty. When he measured the tread depth on my tire it still had 9/32 of the orgional 10/32 they come with. After talking to Goodyear they agreed to waranty the tire.
Now here comes the good part. This was on a monday that all this happened. He checks the Discount Tire locations nearby and finds 0 matching tires, he then checks all the stores in the Discount Tire company and finds 0 matching tires. So getting a tire for my car that has no spare is looking pretty bad at this point. He then calls the local Goodyear warehouse, I happen to live in AZ where there is a town called Goodyear because of the tire company!, they also have 0, they also tell him that if we order it it should arrive sometime around April, 15th or so........WHAT??? and what do you suppose I do with 3 tires on my car till then? So next he calls the HQ for Goodyear and finds out that the only wharehouse in the country that has any of these particular tires 225/45R18 is located in Denver CO, thankfully not too far from AZ, or so I think.....Once he contatcted that particular Goodyear warehouse he was told that he could not purchase the tire directly from them since his store was not located in their territory. Thankfully he came up with an idea to have a Denver store order the tire then ship to him. SO once this process took place I finally got a new tire covered under waranty on Friday. The one with the break only lasted till Wednesday when it gave out on my way to work. No rim damage and able to get home, although at a crawl. I removed the bad wheel and took it to the location where the tire was arriving. Then on friday when they got the tire they mounted and balanced it and I'm back in my car that night. It was a bit of an adventure but it all worked out in the end.
The tire eneded up costing me $32 and then balance and new road hazzard waranty through Discount. Better than a full price tire!
I also learned that I could add the road hazzard waranty through Discount since I purchased my car new and it came with tires that they carry, so another $100 and all my tires were covered. I think its a better deal than $500 bucks from BMW. Works for me.
Final thought, if you happen to have Goodyear Efficient Grip RFT do your best not to blow one out since it seems to be a very rare tire in the US right now.
Tire in the back at work once it was replaced.
