Warranty for OEM Tyres vs tyres purchased from the aftermarket After long procrastination, I am writing my first post and this is about a bad experience that I recently had with my car tyres.
I purchased my first car last year in October. After long deliberation and considering several cars, wifey finally gave a green for Tata Tigor XZ+. It is a petrol manual. I will post a first-year owner's experience review for this underrated and undersold car in about 6 months.
So coming to the topic of this post, one fine weekend in March, we decided to go to Avani temple and Shree Kotilingeshwara Swamy Temple. They are close by, around 2 hour's drive from Bengaluru. Our first stop was at the Avani Temple. A college friend and his wife also joined us. The drive was mostly uneventful, we spent the two-hour drive chatting about everything on this planet ranging from politics to history to movies and whatnot. We had a stop at the famous Prasad hotel at Mulbagal and then proceeded to Avani Temple.
The outside premise of the temple was under maintenance and there were some stone blocks scattered here and there.
I proceeded to park in an empty area which was relatively clear. As luck would have it, the front left tyre brushed the edge of a heavy stone block. The tyre would have missed the edge had I parked even an inch to either side. I heard a loud hissing sound as soon as I stepped out and it took me a while to realise that the sound was coming from my vehicle itself.
By the time I realised what had just happened the tyre was already half-deflated and totally flattened it another 30 seconds.
The first trouble with a brand new car. My mood got ruined as I was sure the damage must be significant. A tubeless tyre would not totally deflate in under a minute on normal puncture.
Anyway, I checked my emotions as there were other people with me and proceeded on a tour of the temple. The inside of the temple was cool and that cleared my mind.
After the visit, I got to work, took out the spare wheel and removed the punctured one. Upon removal, I saw that the inside sidewall had a cut that was all the way through the rubber. No wonder it deflated so quickly. I understood that this won't be easily repairable. Anyway, so we proceed to Shree Kotilingeshwara Swamy Temple on the spare wheel and later returned back to Bengaluru driving below 80Kmph.
The financial planner in me checked for the price of the same tyre during the lunch break and found it to be around 6.5k. I mentally prepared myself for an unplanned expense of that much in case it doesn't get fixed.
Back in Bengaluru the next day I visited a local tyre puncture repair shop and showed the damage. As the sidewall was damaged it wasn't fixable by the regular method. However, he told me that he would get it repaired by some process called patching and explained to me that it would involve heating the area and pasting a rubber patch from inside and outside. He quoted 1500 for it and assured me that it would be safe at triple-digit speeds. I wasn't sure so I called the TASC (Adishakti Motors, Hebbal) to check it by any chance they could help. I visited them the same day and they took the tyre and told me they will try to claim a warranty but the tyre manufacturer will have the final say.
The tyre in question was a Bridgestone B250 175/60 R15 81H tyre with less than 3500kms on it. After returning home I started reading about the patching solution and found some threads on Team-BHP. After reading several posts I decided not to use that fix as it wasn't a safe solution and I cannot risk a tyre burst at highway speeds to save a few thousand bucks.
Two days later the service centre informed me that the warranty claim got rejected as it wasn't a manufacturing defect. Accepting the fate I decided to buy a new tyre and enquired the service centre about the price. To my surprise, they quoted 7200 and another 500 for installation and balancing. I called several other dealers and one dealer (Tyres world, Varthur Road, Bengaluru) quoted me 6500 all-inclusive. I visited them the same day and got a new tyre installed.
Now comes the part that made me write this post. By chance when I visited the tyre dealer a Bridgestone representative was there and was inspecting other tyres that were there for warranty claim. I was surprised to see another tyre with very similar damage in the sidewall and he cleared the warranty claim for it in front of me. Overjoyed I took out the old tyre from the boot and showed it to him. He inspected it and proceeded to log it into his mobile app for registering the warranty claim as he had done earlier for the other tyre. He then asked me the purchase date of the tyre. And then when I told him that it came with the car, he stopped the entry in his mobile app and told me that OEM fitted tyres cannot be claimed for warranty if it is not a manufacturing defect.
Later I read about the terms and conditions of the warranty on Bridgestone's website and though this tyre (B250) is included in their unconditional warranty it doesn't apply to OEM fitted ones. The Bridgestone representative also told me that if the new tyre that I purchased is damaged in exactly the same manner he would pass it for warranty claim.
This seemed an arbitrary rule to me and hence I decided to write about it here. The experience members can enlighten me about the possible reasons why OEM fitted tyres would be treated differently. Also makes me wonder what other OEM fitted 3rd party components, like the battery, are treated differently. Mod Note - Please proofread your post before submitting it.
Last edited by Turbanator : 1st May 2022 at 20:14.
Reason: Grammar and spell errors.
|