Hello All,
I am brand new to this site and I thought it might be a good venue to ask some questions as I am sure many of you out there are much more educated than I in this matter. I will try to make it short!
I purchased a brand new Ford Fiesta in 12 of 2012. In January of 2016 my Ford Service Advisor told me I have Dry Rot on all 4 of my Kumho Tires. This was all totally new to me. He did say it is not urgent and I have time before I really needed to do anything. That was somewhat comforting as a set of 4 new tires is not cheap, esp if you add in the mounting, balancing and alignment.
Fast forward to June of 2016, I am in for a Recall at Ford and Steve, my very nice Advisor tells me it is now time, the Tires are all but shot. I am in a bit of disbelief as the car is less than 4 years old and I have only 19,000 Miles on the Car. The tread is at 4/32" but the cracks are visible to the naked eye and they are abundant.
I decided to contact Kumho and inquire about the Warranty. I was informed to look at the date on the tire. It reads 0712. Which I learned was the Seventh Week of 2012. So essentially the tires sat for many many months before my car was even manufactured.
Kumo States that I have a 4 year Warranty from Dry Rot but it begins with the Date Of Manufacture, NOT the date of my Car Purchase. They also told me, my Ford Advisor should have directed me to contact Kumo back in January of 2016 when he first saw the Dry Rot as it would have been under that 4 Year Threshold. At that time I would have been completely covered for 4 Brand New Tires.
I find this quite troubling. Who is to blame here? Was it really Ford’s responsibility? The only reason I didn’t do anything back in January was because Ford told me not to worry it was not a pressing situation.
Now I find myself going back at forth with Kumho, I have sent them photographs of the tires, given them all my Service Reports from Ford, I even went as far as to shot a video of the Tires on my iPhone and posted it on YouTube only for him to see.
If interested, you can see the link here:
What Kumho came back with is a Voucher for 25% of each tire. I must say I am not thrilled with that.
I have also done some Consumer Affairs research on Kumho Tires and the results could not be worse. You may be shocked at what you read here:
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/tires/kumho.html
So after all that, I would be grateful for some feedback and perhaps some advice for you nice people out there on your experiences, if similar and perhaps how you think I should proceed.
With Many Thanks,
DA