Recently, a customer asked us if we would offer them free tires for life with the purchase of a car, to match the offer of one of our competitors. The offer sounded good, so we looked into the program more closely. This is what we found in the fine print.

The plan requires that every scheduled maintance service be performed at the dealer that sold the vehicle. You can never make the choice to use any other service facility other than where you bought the car. The agreement is voided even if you are out of town require service. It also means that you must pay whatever the dealer wants to charge you for maintenance.

The following is expected costs for servicing a 2006 F150 V8 for 120,000 miles. Notice that there are charges for wheel balancing and tire rotation every five thousand miles and front end alignment every twelve months. Service this often is not recommended by Ford (or any other manufacture we know of) but ARE required to keep the free tires for life program in effect.

Ford Required Maintenance for 120,000 Miles on 2006 F150:	Number Required		Price	Total Price
Change engine oil and replace oil filter	24	X	39.00	936.00
Rotate Tires for optimal tire life	24	X	21.95	526.80
Replace Engine air filter	4	X	35.44	141.76
Replace Fuel filter	4	X	54.00	216.00
Change Automatic transmission fluid	4	X	171.40	685.60
Lubricate 4x2 wheel bearing and grease seals	2	X	144.00	288.00
Change premium gold engine coolant	1	X	128.00	128.00
Replace Spark Plugs	1	X	332.00	332.00
Total Ford Recommended Maintenance Costs:				3254.16
Additional Program Required Maintenance:
Balance tires (at EVERY rotation)	24	X	33.00	792.00
Alignment (at EVERY rotation)	10	X	75.95	759.50
Extra maintance cost over factory recommendations				$1551.50
Total estimated cost to maintain free tire program				$4805.66

The maximum number of tires you could receive in 120000 miles is eight, assuming none needed to be replaced for "misuse, abuse, accidental damage or excessive mileage", all of which are excluded under the plan. The dealer also can cancel the program at any time without obligation.

For this example we used our prices. Currently, we have the lowest labor prices of any Ford dealer in the Charleston area and often offer our customers coupons and discounts that would reduce your cost to service with us even more. We can only imagine how much another dealer would charge for the same service to offset the cost of giving out free tires.

We hope you can see that it is the dealer, not the customer who benefits from "Free Tires for Life". We also know that the S.C. Department of Consumer Affairs and the Federal Trade Commission have a strict policy against the use of the word "free" in dealer advertising when a purchase or other consideration is required to obtain the "free" item.