badgerb
27-01-2015, 08:09 PM
I wanted to buy a new set of winter tyres and wheels (Nokian WR A3 235/55 R17 103V XL and Ronal R41 8x17 5x112 ) for my A6 Quattro (http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/dp/B002OBGYM6) Avant Sline (4g, 245 bhp, 2014)
The 17" wheels were chosen to get a better ride than the standard 18" wheels on the S-line, and I wanted to get Borbet or Ronal wheels as they both also make OEM wheels for Audi and have
TUV certification for the car/tyre combination. I needed to buy two sets, one for my A6 and another for a friend with an almost identical car.
My Audi main dealer offered me some 18" Audi tyres and wheels for about £2K. They also were very concerned to make sure there was sufficient clearance on the large brake callipers on the A6 Quattro.
I looked at the third party market and found several UK based companies offering most of what I wanted at about £1100. There are also several companies based in France/German with UK web portals.
For the first set I chose to buy from "TyreLeader.co.uk", who are actual German based and trade as Reifen R der GmbH, Karlsbad . While the price was very good (about £650 for the Ronal R41 wheels and Nokian tyres) this was a major mistake - please don't repeat it!
I ordered the wheels on-line on 1st December settled back for my wheels a tyres to be delivered.
On 4th December a DPD van turned up with 4 tyres but no wheels. I contacted TyreLeader.co.uk and found that they only ever communicated via their website. Communications were brief, patchy and always unhelpful.
They said the wheels would be two days late.
On 5th December a DPD van turned up with 4 Ronal R41 17" by 8 wheels and a fitting kit of 4 spigots. Horray!
I took the wheels and tyres down to a nearby tyre fitting workshop found""The fitting kit does not work, the spigots you provided (zp 50727) were found by the tyres fitting workshop to be too big for the wheels.
Please correct ASAP and call me on +44....."
Many email were exchanged, I photographed all the casting markings and tried all sorts of things with no success; finally on 16/12/2014 , TyreLeader said they would retrieve the wheels and spigots and replace them.
This never happened and they stopped responding to emails at all on 17th December. At this stage still did not know if the problem was the wheels or the spigots or if there was something wrong with particular my A6.
I decided to tell my friend to buy her wheels from a UK Supplier as she had a skiing trip to France planned. She got the wheels, tyres and fitting kit from RimStyle ( Alloy Wheels for Your 2013 Audi A6 All Models - Rimstyle.com (http://rimstyle.com/alloywheels/selection/?car_model_id=1570&year=2013&manu=ronal)) . They fitted the wheels to the tyres and balanced them. Rimstyle were excellent throughout, charged about £1060 and delivered on time using Goodyear UltraGrip 8 Tyres as they could not get the Nokians in time.
Meanwhile, whilst browsing a German web site that referenced the TUV standards institute, I discovered that my Ronal wheels were actually marked as to fit on a BMW.
The part number on the castings is (as I told Tyreleader on 8th December 2014) RONAL 41R7805.111. According to the TUV Nord documents this is for a BMW car.
After taking advice from the WHICH legal department, I wrote to my credit card company who were UK based and jointly liable with TyreLeader for their failure to provided goods that were fit for purpose.
They took were busy and overloaded so took 5 weeks to actually start to do anything. I had to quote the consumer credit act and threaten to go to the Financial Ombudsman. I got my £285 refunded for the wheels last week.
I now know quite a lot about winter wheels and tyres!
The original Nokian WR A3 235/55 R17 winter tyres seemed OK, so I bought some Borbet CA wheels from Alloy Wheels Direct Ltd <sales@alloywheelsdirect.net> and had these fitted. Chris at Alloy Wheels Direct was very helpful at all stages
and I am now driving around on these wheels and tyres.
Today 27Jan2015 a DPD van arrived , unscheduled and with no paperwork, to collect the BMW Ronal wheels. The whole incident wasted 2 months and about £100 of various costs.
Lessons:
1) Don't buy from TyreLeader! Ever ! They are cheap but if anything goes wrong you will probably waste your money and will definitely waste a lot to time.
2) Always buy using a UK credit card (if you are based in UK)
3) Keep full paper records and photograph everything.
4) Check that your supplier has a UK business address and responds to phone calls.
5) Don't believe the feedback you see on suppliers web sites, even from sites like Trustp***t. It gets filtered.
6) Never buy from TyreLeader!
BB
The 17" wheels were chosen to get a better ride than the standard 18" wheels on the S-line, and I wanted to get Borbet or Ronal wheels as they both also make OEM wheels for Audi and have
TUV certification for the car/tyre combination. I needed to buy two sets, one for my A6 and another for a friend with an almost identical car.
My Audi main dealer offered me some 18" Audi tyres and wheels for about £2K. They also were very concerned to make sure there was sufficient clearance on the large brake callipers on the A6 Quattro.
I looked at the third party market and found several UK based companies offering most of what I wanted at about £1100. There are also several companies based in France/German with UK web portals.
For the first set I chose to buy from "TyreLeader.co.uk", who are actual German based and trade as Reifen R der GmbH, Karlsbad . While the price was very good (about £650 for the Ronal R41 wheels and Nokian tyres) this was a major mistake - please don't repeat it!
I ordered the wheels on-line on 1st December settled back for my wheels a tyres to be delivered.
On 4th December a DPD van turned up with 4 tyres but no wheels. I contacted TyreLeader.co.uk and found that they only ever communicated via their website. Communications were brief, patchy and always unhelpful.
They said the wheels would be two days late.
On 5th December a DPD van turned up with 4 Ronal R41 17" by 8 wheels and a fitting kit of 4 spigots. Horray!
I took the wheels and tyres down to a nearby tyre fitting workshop found""The fitting kit does not work, the spigots you provided (zp 50727) were found by the tyres fitting workshop to be too big for the wheels.
Please correct ASAP and call me on +44....."
Many email were exchanged, I photographed all the casting markings and tried all sorts of things with no success; finally on 16/12/2014 , TyreLeader said they would retrieve the wheels and spigots and replace them.
This never happened and they stopped responding to emails at all on 17th December. At this stage still did not know if the problem was the wheels or the spigots or if there was something wrong with particular my A6.
I decided to tell my friend to buy her wheels from a UK Supplier as she had a skiing trip to France planned. She got the wheels, tyres and fitting kit from RimStyle ( Alloy Wheels for Your 2013 Audi A6 All Models - Rimstyle.com (http://rimstyle.com/alloywheels/selection/?car_model_id=1570&year=2013&manu=ronal)) . They fitted the wheels to the tyres and balanced them. Rimstyle were excellent throughout, charged about £1060 and delivered on time using Goodyear UltraGrip 8 Tyres as they could not get the Nokians in time.
Meanwhile, whilst browsing a German web site that referenced the TUV standards institute, I discovered that my Ronal wheels were actually marked as to fit on a BMW.
The part number on the castings is (as I told Tyreleader on 8th December 2014) RONAL 41R7805.111. According to the TUV Nord documents this is for a BMW car.
After taking advice from the WHICH legal department, I wrote to my credit card company who were UK based and jointly liable with TyreLeader for their failure to provided goods that were fit for purpose.
They took were busy and overloaded so took 5 weeks to actually start to do anything. I had to quote the consumer credit act and threaten to go to the Financial Ombudsman. I got my £285 refunded for the wheels last week.
I now know quite a lot about winter wheels and tyres!
The original Nokian WR A3 235/55 R17 winter tyres seemed OK, so I bought some Borbet CA wheels from Alloy Wheels Direct Ltd <sales@alloywheelsdirect.net> and had these fitted. Chris at Alloy Wheels Direct was very helpful at all stages
and I am now driving around on these wheels and tyres.
Today 27Jan2015 a DPD van arrived , unscheduled and with no paperwork, to collect the BMW Ronal wheels. The whole incident wasted 2 months and about £100 of various costs.
Lessons:
1) Don't buy from TyreLeader! Ever ! They are cheap but if anything goes wrong you will probably waste your money and will definitely waste a lot to time.
2) Always buy using a UK credit card (if you are based in UK)
3) Keep full paper records and photograph everything.
4) Check that your supplier has a UK business address and responds to phone calls.
5) Don't believe the feedback you see on suppliers web sites, even from sites like Trustp***t. It gets filtered.
6) Never buy from TyreLeader!
BB