Defer Tire Poor work and would not honor claim of damage Streetsboro, Ohio

If your service technician has been performing alignments for 32 years maybe he needs to be re-schooled. Cars have changed a lot since 1980. This car had no lift kit. The torsion bars were cranked and your technician trashed my car. Your service department then tried to tell me the frame was bent. I had the car repaired at a reputable GM service technician and the funny thing is he said your technician damaged my car! I should have sued your company since you can check carfax and see this vehicle had never been aligned until your service tech was involved. I hope more people read this and your business tanks! I can assure you that you have seen my last dollar!

First of all, the the technician who performed the alignment has more than "a few years" experience performing them. He has been doing alignments at my shop for 32 years and has performed in the neighborhood of 30,000 to 40,000 alignments for me. We don't only do retail alignments, we do hundreds of alignments per year for other repair shops, body shops, and car dealerships as well. We know what we're doing. Additionally, we use the latest and most up to date alignment equipment.

The customer came in early this year requesting an alignment. He had put a lift kit on which raised the vehicle and threw the alignment settings all out of wack. As I recall, he had also installed oversized tires as well. My technician performed the alignment and  printed the before and after readings which we keep on file. The customer paid his bill and went on his way.

A few months later the customer returned complaining that the right front tire was hitting the rear of the front  inner fender well when making a sharp turn. We had not noticed it on our previous test drive, but is possible that we had not made a sharp enough turn to cause it to hit. Part of the problem was the bigger tire size, but we decided to see if we could make some adjustments to alleviate the problem. My technician put the vehicle back on the alignment rack and was able to make enough caster adjustment [staying within the specification tolerances and doing both side as to keep the caster even] to move the tire forward in the wheel well so it wouldn't hit. We did this at no charge to the customer.
However, my technician still was puzzled as to why only the right side had been hitting so he took several frame measurments and determined that the frame on the right side had been pushed back in relation to the other side. As I stated above, we do a lot of body shop work and are very familiar with determining frame issues. This vehicle indeed has a frame issue.

As to the customer's claim that we had broken some of the alignment adjustments, yes the second time it came in several were broken. We see this from time to time. It happens when someone with inexperience working with them tries to move them with the weight of the vehicle on the front tires. They must only be adjusted with the weight  of the vehicle off the front tires. I can assure you it didn't happen here.
We take pride in all our work and strive to maintain the highest of customer satisfaction. If we make a mistake we own up to it and take care of the customer. The result is achieving the Better Business Bureau's highest rating, an A+.

Mark Defer
Defer Tire