Was time to put tires on the car yesterday. Took it to my favorite place to hate, Wal Mart. Had my son follow me there, for a ride home. I simply cannot stand to wait in a shitty lobby for 2 hours, while they are doing a 35 minute job. Really grinds my gears.

So I tell the guy what tires I want, jump in my sons car, and ride home. We went back a few hours later to get the car, and I remembered that when I dropped the car off, they did not ask me if I wanted Road Hazard, (a warranty not worth the paper it’s written on IMO.) So I told the lady at the counter “I forgot to mention, I do not want Road Hazard,” when I dropped the car off.

“Well why on earth would anyone not want Road Hazard?” She replied. I told her I’ve been burned a few times after spending nearly another 50 bucks for Road Hazard, and then being refused to honor the so called warranty.

She fumbled and grumbled about it as she was going back over the transaction, and canceling the Road Hazard. I mentioned again I’d been burned by it, and refuse to pay for something they will not honor, and please do not take it personally.

You see, there are some wee little exceptions in that “warranty.” If you manage to get a hole in a sidewall, they refuse to warranty. If you get a puncture in the tread, too close to the sidewall, they won’t warranty it either. If you have taken very good care of your tires, by maintaining proper air pressure, and rotating the tires every few thousand miles, and your car starts skating in a downpour, they will go to your tires with a tread measuring tool and find your tread is .5 millimeter beyond their arbitrary warranty claims. In this case it was too much tread by a .5 millimeter margin. By the time I’d have gotten to where they’d warranty the tires, they’d be too dangerous to drive on, hell they were already dangerous when it was raining. And… they would have been pro rated to just about nothing anyway if they did warranty!

All three have happened to me over the many years I’ve been driving. I now refuse to pay for something, that I am only going to wind up being screwed out of. This so-called warranty is heavily skewed to favor the outcome, of them not honoring the warranty. At least in my experience.

Maybe some folks have better luck than I do. Maybe Road Hazard is worth the extra money spent for someone. Just hasn’t been me.

Note: I’m having to rely on memory, going back quite a few years here. So it is possible, but not very likely, I made a mistake in this report. Nevertheless, I maintain my position. Road Hazard ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.