Daniel’s Tire Shop

One of the things I love about living in the the city is all the local neighborhood businesses that exist for almost any service you could need. A particularly common one is the cheap tire repair shop. They look like the last place you want to take your car, but they’re usually fast, cheap, and totally reliable. This place is the exception to the rule.
After digging out our car from under 2 weeks of snow accumulation, we found that one of our tires was almost flat. We drove to the nearest tire shop, which happened to be Daniel’s. Nobody seemed to speak much English, which made communication harder, but usually this is fine as long as everyone is patient and takes the time to make sure we understand each other. At Daniel’s, though, they seemed irritated that I didn’t understand immediately. One guy claimed that both front tires had «booboos» and needed to be replaced. He pointed to a bulge on the flat one, but I didn’t see anything wrong with the other. I asked the other guy who had already started replacing it what was wrong with it, and he told me to just be patient. He wouldn’t say anything else, and I couldn’t tell if he understood. Obviously, this is totally my fault for not pushing the issue further, but I mention this exchange just to illustrate their unhelpful attitude.
The real problem with Daniel’s is that they’re dishonest and do crappy work. The first guy told me he would replace the tires for $ 60 each. We agreed since we needed to get on the road for a long trip and just wanted to get the tires fixed as fast as possible. Several hours later, when we got to our destination, we saw the original flat tire was almost flat again. It’s had a persistent slow leak since they changed it. We took it to a more reliable mechanic and discovered not only that the tire they sold us had a small side slit in it but that they also bent the rim when changing the tire, which has cost us another $ 90 to fix in addition to the cost of another new tire.