It's a little time consuming, but I perform an on-line ritual when buying tires most of the time. Since I have a changer and balancer, there is no reason for me to go to a brick and mortar store, but I give them a chance if they want to play ball. Tire Rack has the best web site, so I start there. I pick the tires I want for my customer and then shop them to SimpleTire.com, tire-easy.com, Amazon, and sometimes E-bay and WalMart. I don't automatically order from the cheapest vendor. I put some value in the service I have received from Tire Rack over the many years and the quality of their site. But often, they just get blown out by the others by 15-40%. I can't eat that much difference. If they are within 5%-7% of the others, I buy from them. I do have a local Firestone walk-in store that will match ANY internet price for me on Firestone branded tires only. So I use them when I can. From what I have seen in the last year, Amazon must have struck a deal with Cooper Tires on most of their line. Amazon seems to sell Cooper tires at 15-20% less than any of the other sites I mentioned. We have a large walk-in Cooper Tire dealer in the area and I approached them about selling me tires close to internet prices. They wanted to have NOTHING to do with me and 150-200 tires I would likely buy from them each year. So it's clear some of these walk-in stores are fine with being slaughtered by internet pricing.
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