Just a quick plug if you’re in the UK and have a car needing tyres or a service: I’ve just used Blackcircles for the first time, and I’m seriously impressed. As with most online things it saves you money, and if you go for the full fitting option it’ll book you into a local indie place you probably wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
My two tyres were £30 less than the local Kwik-Fit was charging, and I didn’t have to put up with anyone trying to talk me into paying for wheel alignment, new brakes, aircon recharge, etc etc etc. Worth a click if you need car things done.
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0 responses to “Blackcircles.com: Worth a click if you’ve got a car”
Although you really should get your wheels aligned when you get tyres fitted.
Really? why?
Because wheel alignment can be knocked out by the tyre fitting process, or from encounters with kerbs etc since last alignment, and can seriously affect tyre wear and handling!
BTW I must live near the only decent KwikFit. The one time I asked them to regas my aircon, they didn’t charge me, because it didn’t make the car any cooler!
Wheel alignment passes the brother-in-law test: my brother-in-law is a mechanic and fixes cars for a living and would never spend a single penny on something his car didn’t actually need, and he still pays to have his wheels aligned from time to time, even if he’s not just had new tyres fitted. Claims the effect on fuel consumption of a misaligned wheel is so great that it more than pays for itself.
I agree with the mechanic, wheel alignment is important – but having had them misaligned by well-known national chains of tyre shops in the past, I’d be getting it done at “not a tyre place”.
The other important thing is not to have the sodding wheelnuts blasted on with a pneumatic spanner set on “stun” so that in trying to remove the wheel to fit a spare at the side of the M8 when it’s pissing down, I’m not dragging the car up hill by hand using the wheel spanner… another reason I avoid well-known national chains of tyre shops.
When my wife was given her last company car (it was inherited from someone else who’d left ) someone drove it up from Bristol area to Yorkshire. When we got it it was pretty much undriveable at motorway speeds – seriously frightening. Combination of misaligned wheels, unbalanced wheels and balding tyres made it drive like it was on iced cobblestones about 50mph. The person that delivered it didn’t notice.
Hunnymonster, I’ve had the same experience as you: alignment done so badly that the steering wheel was squint. When I pointed this out I was told that the problem was my car must have been in a bad crash and ineptly repaired, which made it impossible to align the wheels properly. None of that was true, and I got it fixed by a proper mechanic.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I’ll keep an eye out for uneven tyre wear :)
I’ve used Black Circles a couple of times – good prices, good service, recommended.
Not sure what the independent fitting centres really think of the setup, but I get the impression they are keen to maintain their association with Black Circles, which can be revoked quite easily if they screw up too often.
Tried to stay quiet but have to add Event Tyres. I have used Blackcircles and Event Tyres and found Event cheaper each time and they come to you!
When did this blog become a car tyre review site….
Three are the new… maybe not.
Damn you, autocorrect. I typed “tyres” and it changed it to “three”.