Good Tire Shops (Houston, Bellaire, Richmond: insurance, to buy, taxes)

[blkgiraffe]

I need to get my tires checked because my car kind of shakes when I'm on the highway. Anyone know any good places?? Besides Wal-Mart....

[Oskar_Z28]

I have always been happy with discount tire. I've shopped around and alway go back. They will match prices from others.

[MommiePreMed]

Costco
Firestone in Bellaire

[CherryMagic]

NTB

Franchises all over Houston area.

It's the only place I will buy my tires.

[tstone]

I also like NTB because they do alignments (unlike Discount), which is important for squeezing the most life out of your tires. However like all of these chain shops, the service is really dependent on the staff, which has high turnover.

[texan_176]

Buy your tires online from places like Tire rack to avoid all of the taxes and fees. Online tire sellers usually do promotions like a free GPS unit with 4 tires or a $75-100 gift card from VISA with purchase of 4 tires.

Have Discount Tire install the tires because they have the best service and price on labor. Their tire prices are not that good and they pressure you to buy replacement certificates for tires at an extra cost as insurance. I've never once had to use this and it was a waste of money.

For alignment I recc. Brake Check because instead of $65-80 you can pay them $125 for lifetime alignment. As long as you own your car you can go back and they will align it for free in the future. A good rule of thumb is to have the alignment checked every 2-3 oil changes. Firestone also offers lifetime alignment but they are a bit more expensive.

If you have a vibration I also recc. Brake Check again because they diagnose the problem for free and can do the repairs.

Discount Tire just installs tires and repairs flats. They do not touch anything else on the car so no suspension repairs or even alignments are done there.

[CherryMagic]

Brake Check

I would avoid them like the plague. I had one bad and very expensive dealing with this company back in 2003. I finally got my venting done in numerous rip off reports & personal letters to the company - with no response.

Brake check can G T H.

[pmizell]

I also think NTB is the best. The one on Richmond just inside the loop is very very good. The one on the loop by Reliant Center, not as good.

[JL]

To OP:
If you want to go to a small shop, there is one place(Champion Tire) on Alief Clodine that balanced and mounted my four low profile tires for only $20 bucks. Cash of course. I had purchased my tires from tirerack.com and had them dropped shipped to this location. The guys @Champion told me that i could order the tires through them and they would get me a better deal than tirerack. You have to pay in cash though.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by tstone

I also like NTB because they do alignments (unlike Discount), which is important for squeezing the most life out of your tires. However like all of these chain shops, the service is really dependent on the staff, which has high turnover.

I once had an issue with tires bought at Discount and alignment done at Brakechek, tires were wearing and car was pulling. Discount swears the tires were balanced and the problem was in the alignment. Brakechek swears the alignment was spot on and the problem was with unbalanced tires. Since then I only go to places that do both.