Yesterday I became the victim of car discrimination. I called three places for
tire mounting, all of which were recommended by SCCA people, all said they
would do the work and all had similar prices. The first place said on the
phone they could do the work, but refused when I drove up in the car. They
said they didn't want to be responsible for working on that car -- even though
they didn't mind earlier when I told them on the phone what kind of car it
was. This is the most invidious form of car discrimination, couched in false
smiles and alligator tears of regret.
So I left and went to the second place. They said they would do the work, but
upped their estimate to almost twice the original price they quoted -- despite
the fact that I told them the car type and wheel size on the phone before they
gave me the original price quote. This kind of blatant discrimination should
at least have gotten them an unflattering representation on the local TV news
station. Instead, all it did was cause them to lose a customer. I left.
So then I went to the third place. They jacked up the price almost as high as
the previous place, proving that prejudicial "car profiling" is prolific
throughout all of Redwood City. At this point I suspected the first place had
called the other tire dealers, blackballing me and my car. But I was desperate
to get my tires mounted, realized this was a losing battle, and that I had
either to drive across the bay (to get out of the Redwood City "discrimination
zone"), or to pay up. The smug grin of the manager on duty showed that he knew
that I knew that I had little choice in the matter. I paid up.
On the positive side, they did a good job. They spent almost two hours
mounting the tires and did a thorough job balancing, even popping the tire off
and rotating it against the rim and remounting it to reduce the amount of
weight needed for balancing.
But Big O used to do all of this with my RX-7 wheels, and they charged about
70 bucks total for the entire job, which was (I'm ashamed to admit) less than
half what the robber tire barons of Redwood City gouge through their
discriminatory monopolistic price collusion.
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