Your tires can be balance and still wear unevenly. Front tires on a front wheel drive car will wear the edges faster than the rear tires.
I’m with the others in that you aren’t likely to get any money back, unless you can prove the shocks were not replaced at all, Mavis did the work you paid them to do. Ineptitude or ignorance, it didn’t fix your problem, and someone else figured it out (Which I am surprised the dealership couldn’t figure out a wheel bearing, unless they just didn’t want to do it- which I had at a Chevy dealership once.)
and for the record, I check tread depths and wear patters all the time. and I don’t have a lift- so it’s possible this guy did as well.
learn form this, don’t go to Mavis, and perhaps start a long relationship with this new mechanic. And start rotating your tires at least at every oil change, if not more often.
One experiment OP might try, ask a helper to follow behind and watch your rear tires as you drive along, best done on a slightly bumpy road. Ask your helper: Do the rear tires respond to the bumps the same as most the other cars, gently go up and down, more or less following the bumps, or do they wildly bounce and gyrate?
Thing is the rear shocks have already been replaced. I’ve seen tires wobble though due to tread separation, but balance really has nothing to do with it. It’s one of those things that should be left unsaid lest you let your opponent know what you don’t know.
I don’t look at this as a scam. More a matter of some degree of incompetence and guessing. End result is the same though; customer loses money unnecessarily.
Did they replace bearings on one side or both? My assumption is one side only based on the singular word.
It’s my opinion on bearings that both sides should be done although that is not always a given. If one is failing then the other side might not be far behind.
I do not know if your car has gone through this or not but driving in pooled rain water can damage wheel bearings, suspension and steering components, etc.
The situation is the same as boat trailers. Hot bearing attracts water which leads to dilution of the grease and at some point a boat trailer is on the side of the road and missing a wheel.
Last car 3 wheel bearings, no mechanic ever said to me replace both, 3 or 4 hundred each, front left 2 times 140k miles and 180k miles, front right about 165k miles. Being as How I finished one trip for 250 miles with a bad bearing, and no issues because of it, I was happy enough.
Like I said on my 74 Cutlass, one of the front bearings went out at 20,000 miles. They replaced the one and never had another go out for the 240,000 I drove it. On my Aurora, I can’t remember the mileage but seemed to have some road noise. I replaced the one bearing and the road noise was better, then shortly after replaced the other one with similar results. So they were both on the way out.
Why is always the same guys with the best advice here? I’m in the cheap lesson /don’t go to Mavis school. They once fixed a flat for free so I gave them an alignment to do. Worst alignment ever and I was told I had a worn out drag link. One problem: it was a three point steering linkage - no drag link. Lets face it, the best mechanics aren’t found at Mavis.
Just as an update, after some rather rough back and forth between me and Mavis corporate, I was given a full refund. It appears that the manager really was backed into a corner in this one and I think he knew it. Lesson learned during this again is, really stay away from Mavis unless you just need a flat fixed or something along those lines. This wasn’t the first time I had a problem with Mavis.