This Is Considered The Best Tire Retailer By Customer Satisfaction

You want to be able to like the place where you are going to get your vehicle's new tires. This is a costly endeavor that will affect your driving for the next several years. In an ideal world, every tire shop you go to should provide good service, reliable tires that last a long time, and charge reasonable prices. Of course, we do not live in an ideal world, so you need to rely on customer testimonies to determine which tire shop will provide you with the best experience.

This is where a resource like Consumer Reports comes in handy, as it collects the opinions of actual customers about their experiences with tire shops. According to those surveyed, Les Schwab Tire Centers stands out as satisfying customers on average. You would be forgiven if you hadn't heard of Les Schwab before. That is because it is a regional tire shop chain that only stretches across 15 different states, primarily in the Midwest and the West Coast of the United States. That said, Consumer Reports notes that this retailer routinely ranks at the top of this list thanks to high satisfaction scores for installation quality, sales service, and the ease of making appointments and checking out. Also, Les Schwab is known for offering various perks, such as being one of many retailers that offer free tire rotations. The estimated cost of a tire at Les Schwab is $212, which is pretty average compared to other highly rated tire shops in Consumer Reports.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the United States does not have access to Les Schwab Tire Centers, so while Consumer Reports ranks it at the top, most people will have to look elsewhere for well-liked tire retailers. Consumer Reports is not the only publication that features rankings of tire shops. You can find similar surveys conducted by J.D. Power, which have reached very different conclusions. According to it, the highest-rated tire shop is Midas. Unlike Les Schwab, Midas is a full-service mechanic shop rather than a place that exclusively works on wheels, but according to J.D. Power's 1,000-point scale for its satisfaction index, Midas still ranks highest with a score of 863, besting Les Schwab by just 8 points.

Midas is a far more accessible tire shop as well. There are over 1,200 total locations across the United States and Canada, meaning there's a good chance one is near you. While Midas performs incredibly well in J.D. Power ratings, the same cannot be said for Consumer Reports. Among the 32 tire retailers on Consumer Reports' full ranking, Midas sits in the bottom half at 21. In general, full-service auto care centers rank quite lowly in customer reviews, like Pep Boys and Firestone Complete Auto Care. Consumer Reports customers prefer retailers that deal exclusively or almost exclusively in tires. Those surveyed by J.D. Power take the opposite approach, as Jiffy Lube ranks second on its list with 857 points and isn't even mentioned by Consumer Reports. It's differences in methodology like this that show why it's important to use more than one source in your research.

While Consumer Reports and J.D. Power have some differences at the very top of their respective rankings, there is one commonality between them when you go a few spots down, and that is Discount Tire. The retailer ranks fifth in owner satisfaction according to Consumer Reports and sixth according to J.D. Power. There is little consensus among those surveyed by the two publications, but Les Schwab Tire Centers and Discount Tire manage to bridge that gap.

The top three tire retailers in J.D. Power's rankings are all full-service auto repair shops, much like Midas. The other two are Jiffy Lube and Meineke Car Care Centers, and right below Discount Tire on the list is Goodyear Auto Service, another full-service center. Clearly, those surveyed by J.D. Power like that you can get your new tires at the same place where you can have every other issue with your vehicle fixed. That being said, Les Schwab Tire Centers and Big O Tires do round out the top five on the ranking.

The number two tire retailer, according to Consumer Reports, isn't a specific retailer at all. Instead, it is a blanket category for independent tire retailers. This encapsulates all of the local shops in your area where you can get tires. Notably, Consumer Reports lists the average price of one tire at an independent retailer as $187, which is among the lowest average prices across all retailers surveyed. You also have a good chance of receiving a more personalized service at an independent retailer, because they aren't beholden to policies enacted nationally by an anonymous corporate entity. Also, who doesn't like to support small local businesses?