I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I have had good
service from the place I recommended. If you are
spending a $100, Custom Alignment in Mountain View
charges in that range and do good job. They will quote
that price up front though.
I suspect that some of the "discrimination" is based
on the facts that your car looks like it can go
150mph, even if you have no intent to go that fast.
Tire and wheel balance take on a new importance at
those speeds. on the other hand, your Panoz also
looks expensive. If you had shown up in an econobox
with 4 wheels and tires in the back, they might very
well have given you the $60 mount and balance.
I hope you have a better experience next time.
Alan Gruner
--- "Michael R. Clements" <mrclem@telocity.com> wrote:
> 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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