Cooper Tyres

Coopers at that!

Not Just any ol tyres Allan.

I'm not a big fan. I think their warranty is a dammed insult to customers intelligence. But they seem to get good reviews.
http://www.productreview.com.au/p/cooper-a-t3.html

http://www.1010tires.com/Tires/Reviews/Cooper/DISCOVERER+A-T3

A whole set of our STTs were replaced after 40K. Would you call that an " insult to customers intelligence" Five tyres for free!!!!!

I gotta admit, that sounds pretty good.

Your not kidding. After all the bad reviews, note that you never hear good ones, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Phil

Interesting Phil, You did better than me.

I had Mickey Thompson AT's a while ago. While Mickey Thompson don't have a similar mileage warranty, they do have a similar product warranty and MT / Cooper are distributed by the same company in Australia. After about 10,000km, 2 of them had bad bubbling on the sidewalls. The dealer agreed and called out the rep.

Here is what annoyed me. They offered compensation of 50% off what I payed for them (which was a small discount off list), but the dealer said he had to sell the new replacements at list price in that situation. I also had to pay for fitting and balancing of the replacements. The replacement cost amounted to about 60% of the original buy price to replace 2 10000km old tyres that should really have been replaced for free. They had me by the you know whats.

The tyres went on and lasted about 60,000 kms, which is about average for what I do, and I was generally happy with them ( except they did chip more than I expected on dirt roads, and the sidewalls bagged out too much on sand IMHO) ,but I thought it was an awful response to a legitimate problems and it left a scar till this day.

Never again.

I did pretty well out of Mickey T with my ATZ P3's.

They started to show cracks (there rep said it was something called cold tear - not letting them warm up before driving aggressively - but that's a whole other story). When I argued the toss with the rep, the State Manager of Exclusive got involved and all 6 tyres were replaced gratis.

The two spares were brand new, never on the road and the other four had approx 35000 km on them. They even had them fitted and balanced at my supplier.

Turns out it was a compound issue - which is exactly what the 4 Mickey T dealers told me it was when I got them to check them out.

Boobook - not only the same distributor, but I have been told that they actually come out of the same factory by a Mickey T dealer but no concrete proof?????

Cheers

Anthony

Maybe it all comes down to who you speak to from the distributor. Your example seemed to go from a poor response to a great outcome thorough your escallation. Maybe I should have pushed back more, but it was totally obvious the tyres were faulty and should have been replaced. Pressures and use were exactly the same as the other 2 (good) tyres.

They won on the day but they'll never get a sale out of me again.

No truer words were spoken than those in your very first sentence BB.

Even back when I was a nipper and helping out in Dad's shop. The first impression does matter. More so these days, especially when speaking to the younger generation. They don't know body language. You can't see on emails and sms and the social media.

Phil

And I agree with both of you!

During the whole fiasco (because it wasn't as simple as make a claim and have it sorted) I maintained a very metered and measured approach.

The company rep NEVER inspected the tyres and made his call from discussion with the shop I bought them from. I was cc'd into the emails and it was personal comments about me (whom he had never spoken too nor met) that caused me to escalate it up the chain.

I went to other suppliers of the tyres (and a couple of non suppliers) and sought their independent opinion (I never discussed the claim, the reps conclusions or the contents of emails). They all came up with the same conclusion - compound fault.

I researched the phenomenon of "cold tear in tyres" and found that it didn't apply in my case (WA does not get the necessary extremely low temps, my driving style would hardly be called aggressive, it is a 4.2 lt 105 series Landcruiser after all).

Armed with all of this, I went back to the tyre shop and had them contact the state manager to set up a site meeting to inspect the tyres and discuss the claim. Within 10 mins of him being there, it was all sorted. He confirmed, by visual inspection that it was a compound issue and although it was purely cosmetic and not potentially dangerous he said it was not what was expected of their product and they would replace all tyres (as they were from the same batch). Replacement tyres have performed faultlessly so far.

A great outcome.

Cheers

Anthony

"Some people have had good experiences, some not so good. There just isn't any consistency with the Coopers"

Possibly the same for most tyres...some people will have a bad run and blame it on the tyre, then get another brand and all good. Conclusion, second brand better when in fact it was just a case of pure chance. So be cautious with any "opinion" provided by anyone (on any matter) without obtaining specific details on how they have arrived at their conclusion.

I see some people whinging about Coopers warranty - different subject to OPs original question.

Have used Cooper AT3s in the past (currently have older ATRs on the Prado) - good value for money and worked fine. Can't say anything bad about them.

Cheers
Greg

Yes I love it. This is their FAQ on the 100,000km warranty.

Cooper Warranty(?)

Highlights.
-Does not apply if you buy the tyres outside a Capital City.
-A dealer can chose not to honor the warranty if you have any chips, cuts or marks from road use.
-You have to have a rotate, balance and wheel alignment every 10000 km at a Cooper dealer.
-100,000 means 50,000 to 100,000km at their discretion

Apart from that the warranty is rock solid.

Sure it is a good think to regularly attend to balance rotation and alignment but when and where you need it, not the nearest capital city cooper dealer at elevated prices.


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I don't think the Americans trust them. I recently went to Big Island in Hawaii and lots of lifted 4wds with BFG's and a few other brands but did not see any Cooper "tires".