Carroll's Tire & Auto Center

Merchant improperly repaired vehicle as per recommendation and approval. This mistake lead to a burnt out transfer case and an additional $1,500 expeOn November 17th my wife brought our car to the merchant complaining about a noise that we suspected was coming from the tires. The merchant did not test drive the vehicle but prescribed a solution of replacing the back tires with the current front tires and rebalancing them and then having 2 new tires added to the front of the car. They also recommended an alignment. When the repair was completed on November 18th the merchant merely replaced the front tires. Unfortunately my wife didn't check their work and drove off. Additionally, they didn't provide us with a diagnostic detail about the alignment and the repairs made to properly align the vehicle. The good news was that the noise that the car had been making stopped. The car was back into the merchant for an annual inspection on November 21st and the car some how passed inspection with rear tires that had 67k miles of wear on them. On November 22nd I noticed that the back tires were never changed and that the front tires were brand new. The merchant was contacted on November 24th about the problem and they replaced the rear tires with two off-brand new tires, which was accepted by me. As soon as the new tires were on and my wife drove away the vehicle started making a noise. She returned to the merchant explaining that the vehicle was again making the noise which she had thought was the same noise. She was told that it wasn't the tires but the transmission. When I got home from work I test drove the vehicle and found the noise to be a new noise and that I would be taking the car to a transmission specialist the next day. Upon their inspection they found that the transfer case had burned up. My car is AWD and everything you read on the internet says that you can't have a large difference in tire tread between the front and rear tires as this could cause a transfer case issue. I contacted Carroll's and told them of the situation. They asked for time to research before getting back to me. It was during this research that they learned of this issue and that what happened to my car is completely possible that there is no time table for which the transfer case would burn up. Even with this knowledge Carroll's is refusing responsibility and refusing to aid in the financial responsibility of this chain reaction repair which will cost me around $1,500. Their feeling is that they made up for their mistake by replacing the back tires at their expense. Had they diagnosed the original problem and made a proper repair recommendation for an AWD vehicle I would not be in this situation. They chose not to test drive the car to hear the noise and they chose not to recommend replacing all 4 tires. They then botched their own recommended repair leading to bigger problems in which they are refusing to accept responsibility. None of this is even around how the car passed NC state inspection with tires having 67k miles of wear on them. I can't imagine that they truly inspected the vehicle. And I seriously doubt that they did any alignment work.Desired SettlementI feel that Carroll's should pay for the transfer case replacement.Business Response When the customer came in and said she heard a noise we went outside and looked at her tires. 2 of the tires were cupped and we advised the customer that that could very well be the cause of her noise. I looked at the tires and 2 of them were old and worn out and 2 of them were fairly new but cupped. we agreed on replacing the worn out tires and rotating the cupped tires to the rear and balancing them. When the customer came in to have the tires done (a day or so later) there was a miscommunication and we replaced the wrong 2 tires. after finding out about what had happened we offered to replace the other 2 tires for no charge to the customer. The customer came back in after the tires were replaced about a noise. Our mechanic put the car up on a lift and checked all the work done. We showed the customer that the noise she was hearing was coming from the transmission area. Her response was that that very well could have been the noise she was hearing the whole time. When the customer called the next day he would not let me speak to the mechanic that looked at his car at the new shop so I could ask questions and basically said the noise was our fault for not having tires with the same tread depth on the vehicle even though they had been driving the car for at least a year before they ever came into our shop with tires that had completely different tread depths. Since he would not let me speak to the person looking at his transmission, I called the person who does all of our transmission work. he said that if there was a problem caused by the difference in tread depths it would be so bad that you would not be able to drive the car (locking up and bucking) and that the whining noise was probably from damage caused overtime from driving. Since the customer said to me and my mechanics that the noise sounded like the noise she had had the whole time, the fact that the customer had been driving with different tires on the car for at least a year previously, and the fact that my transmission mechanic started that the customer would be having different symptoms if we had caused the problem we dont feel like we caused this problem and therefor dont feel as though we should have to pay for a new transfer case.