Discount Tire Direct acquisition of Tire Rack and my dissappointment

So I got a DTD credit card years ago to buy tires and pay no interest when paying off in the time allotted. It was an easy and painless way to get snows or summers (or track tires) when needed without dropping a big number all at once.

Well, now DTD no longer sells tires. They direct you to the Tirerack.com site. Guess what? My DTD card is no good there. 

I need tires for the Prius C I just bought. I wanted to pay them off over time. 

Do any of you have  Tirerack.com card? The DTD card was by Synchrony Bank. Always been great to deal with them. They also provide our CareCredit card that we use for the dogs when there's a big bill at the vet's.

Synchrony does all of that type of credit card from what I can tell. If you want to do that, get the paypal version then you get the zero interest deal anywhere that accepts paypal (which is virtually any online vendor), instead of having to have multiple brand specific cards. Note that you're passing up any cashback/rewards by using that card versus a normal card, so while paying over time is nice it's probably not as good of a deal overall unless you genuinely can't afford to pay the amount in full within a month or so. The "better" (though higher effort) method is to just cycle through real credit cards with zero interest introductory offers, that way you get zero interest (with a longer term) *and* cashback/rewards.

Soooo...

Is Tirerack now a subsidiary of Discount Tire?

I haven't dealt with either of them lately, but I did prefer Discount Tire..

Thx,

Rog

In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :

I have nothing to add about CCs but for Prius Tires...

For years now, I ran Falken 201s on my fleet of Prius.  They are quiet and smooth.  I'm not gonna call them sporty or inspiring but for me they are just plain ole, very good at going down the road.  

The 201's were rated for 65k.  Falken also has  250's that are rated for 75k.  The 250 seems like it might be the updated 201.  

Another thing about these Falken is the used to be cheap...like $75 each, mounting included.  Them's days are over (probably was 2018) but the Falkens are still value priced compared to some others.

I jumped on Tire Rack site.  I thought the Prius C took the same size as Gen2 Prius...sort of:
Prius C is  175/65-15
Gen2 is 185/65-15

The size difference is almost indiscernible with the Gen2 being a little taller from ever so slight more sidewall.  But, that also could mean more cush.  See if you can find Gen2 size (more populare size) cheaper then Prius C size.  

I recently applied for and received a Tire rack card. Easy application and was able to use it right away. Mostly applied to take advantage of a couple of offers (two $70 Visa prepaid cards). 

I think the only downside was the install cost - I sent em to Discount tire for convenience, but it was 100 for a mount and balance. I was told their systems (Discount and Tire rack) aren't synced up; the techs had an issue locating my tires within their store. 

Other than that, good experience thus far. 

Wow, honestly, this is pretty annoying. 

Tire Rack is great and all, but I had been doing business with DTD for years and had the credit card as well. Their pricing was nearly always better than Tire Rack with the card, and they offered all sorts of extra incentives to use it. Now, I'll have to get another CC, since that one is all but useless. Ugh. 

Synchrony is utterly terrible at credit cards. Tread carefully 

I have a DT/synchrony card and used it for years at the local DT for the 6 months zero interest and rebate deals.  Unfortunately the rebate deals are all but useless anymore... usually restricted to a few particular tires or specific brand I'm not interested in.  Also, DT was refusing to mount my race tires because of an arbitrary "safety" limit on wheel size for a give tread size.

I switched to another local tire dealer that matched DT/TR pricing and didn't make an issue of mounting them, and haven't used my DT card in a while, but we moved so I may try DT again before looking for a local shop.

Rodan said:

I have a DT/synchrony card and used it for years at the local DT for the 6 months zero interest and rebate deals.  Unfortunately the rebate deals are all but useless anymore... usually restricted to a few particular tires or specific brand I'm not interested in. 

Yeah, the days of the card/deals being great seem to be long gone.  I managed a slight discount on some DD tires (where I didn't care about a specific tire) recently, but that was about it.  

Nothing like years ago when they would offer $100 off a wheel package, $100 off a tire package, then a man. rebate of some sort on top of that.  I had $350 off an $850 wheel/tire package in 2018.

Whelp, that sucks. I used to comparison shop between the two. Sometimes TR would have better prices but DTD had free shipping. My last 4 or 5 tire purchases have been through DTD.

I shop tirebuyer, part of ATD, sometimes simpletire.com, and some others like summit and jegs. Some of the brands I want aren't sold by others, like lionhart.

stanger_mussle (Supported by GRM undergarments) said:

 

Whelp, that sucks. I used to comparison shop between the two. Sometimes TR would have better prices but DTD had free shipping. My last 4 or 5 tire purchases have been through DTD.

Tire Rack has had free shipping for a while now. DTD has an occasional weird sale but in general I've never seen the prices be different by more than a few dollars. In any case since they've been the same company I doubt the prices were any different between the two...that just wouldn't make any sense.

Damn, DTD you used to be able to shop wheels by specs, which you can't do on TR :(

Ranger50 said:

I shop tirebuyer, part of ATD, sometimes simpletire.com, and some others like summit and jegs. Some of the brands I want aren't sold by others, like lionhart.

I too used to buy off that ATD consumer site but locally the shops they contract with have gotten really high priced on installation.  I suspect that high priced installation is to offset losses from having you buy the tires direct.  I then found that WM gets tires from ATD as well so for simple stuff, I check the WM price too.  On my last couple purchase, when I factor instal prices the WM comes out cheaper.  

In reply to John Welsh :

I won't let those mouthbreathers even look at my vehicle. Too many berkeleyups. I have a local franchised place in the messican hood of town that mounts and balances for like 15/each. I also have mounted and dismounted my fair share of tires and it would take at least a hour from start to finish, if nothing went wrong, for a set of 4... shop labor is approaching or is $150/hr or more. That's my metric if it's too much to pay or not. I'm seriously contemplating dbl beadlocks next.