Grrrrr, NTB, GRrrr, validated why I don't shop there (long rant)

masraum · 06-08-2010, 07:33 PM

A little background. 15ish years ago, I went to NTB for tires and alignments. They seemed to do tires ok, I always had to take an alignment back at least once, the car would either pull or the steering wheel would be off, but they always fixed it and the customer service seemed ok. I eventually stopped the alignments, but still did tires. Between 5 and 10 years ago their service got so bad that I stopped going altogether. Broken parts and crappy service.

Well, about a year ago my daughter's Jeep Liberty had a bad battery. She is out of the house, so she took it in and bought another. She went to NTB, but by the time I found out, it was done.

Yesterday she calls, she's stuck in a parking lot, not only will her car not start, but if it gets jumped the car won't stay running unless you're giving it gas (won't idle). I remember that her radar detector has a voltmeter built in so I ask her to tell me what it says. 12.5V is the answer. OK, the battery has a full charge, and the car will jump and stay running, but not idle. Not only that, but when she hits the lights, the voltage goes to 2.5V. I figure it's the battery, but it's Sun night so there's not much to be done. She had a way to manage school today, so she left the Jeep in the lot.

I used to work at a parts store, I know all about proper load testing of a battery. As long as the battery shows 12.6V, you can load test it. You can have an 800cca battery with a full charge (12.6V) that will only test with 50cca. That's a bad battery. A battery with less than 12.6V is not necessarily a bad battery, it's just a discharged battery and needs charging. It's pretty rare that a cell goes bad and gives you low Volts.

Today I got out of work a little early and picked her up to go check things out. I took some tools, a voltmeter and some nitrile gloves. When we got there the Battery was still showing 12.44V (practically a full charge), but it wouldn't start the car. Everything pointed to the battery so we took it back to NTB. I get there and the guy says "I've got to charge it for an hour or so."

"But it's 12.5V, it's fully charged."

"I've got to charge it before I test it."

OK, whatever, so I go out to the car. Then I change my mind and go back in with my voltmeter. "So look, this battery is showing 12.76V because you've had it on charge for 3 minutes. It's fully charged, lets test it." We tested, it showed bad, but he insisted upon charging. We went out, my daughter said, "We'll (her and boyfriend) will come back in an hour and get the battery." She didn't have the tools to put it back in so we stopped at the store and I bought her what she needed. The store was 3 buildings down from NTB. By the time I'd bought the tools I thought "screw it, the battery's bad, I'm going back to talk to the manager"

I got back and the first guy wasn't around, so a ditzy looking attractive Latina comes up and asks what I need. I follow her out to my battery, she takes the charging leads off of the battery, puts them in one hand and sends showers of sparks all over the place. She jumps and separates the leads, then after holding them for a few secs while she makes sense of what's going on, she puts them back in one hand (more sparks) and eventually turns off their charger. The batter is showing over 13V at this point. She checks it with their tester (I stood way back) and the machine says "replace battery". She handed the slip to the Store Manager and walks off. I had to explain everything to him. He seems testy, but looks up my daughter in the computer to check her warranty. (7 year battery with 3 year free replacement). He goes in the back and comes out with a 5 year/2year battery. When I point out that he brought out a cheaper battery I get "Oh, I thought I got the other one, one sec." OK, whatever, he's human, could have been a mistake.

He brought us a new battery, the right one this time, and we left. I put the battery in the car and told her to start the car. Click

WTF!!! I put my voltmeter on the battery, yep, 11.55V. Holy crap, they gave us a dead battery. We jumped her car, but it wouldn't idle unless you prodded the gas (same as the previous night). We got it running and sat there and drove circles around the parking lot for 20 minutes. When I put the voltmeter on the car when the engine is running, I read a steady 13.7-14V so I knew the alternator was working. After 30 minutes I decided, screw this, they owe me a working battery. So I took the new battery out and drove back. The manager didn't seem happy to see me. I told him "This battery is dead." He went to get his tester. I was thinking, "you'd better not tell me that you've got to charge the battery for an hour or I'm losing it." Fortunately for him that NEW battery tested BAD! He didn't apologize or anything, just said "I'll get another battery," and left. He tested the new battery, it tested good. My daughter had told him that the jeep wouldn't even run once it was jumped. He proceeded to very authoritatively tell us "a car can run without any battery at all, if it won't run after a jump, something else is wrong." Yeah, back in the 60s and 70's and even some later cars, but these days, with everything being electronic and computer controlled, it doesn't really work that way. Whatever.

Yeah, we put the second battery in and the car started right up and idled all day.

I'm sure, and the look on his face told me that when I took that first battery back he was thinking "what'd you do to the new battery dumbazz?" I completely understand too. I worked with the public, they are that bad. I still get much better customer service at a parts store than I do at NTB. Yeah, after giving us the good battery, we were driving back to the Jeep and my daughter said "I'm mad, he never even apologized for giving us a bad battery the first time."

She said that next time she needs a new battery, she's going to buy one from someplace else instead of going back to NTB

I decided earlier when I was still hot that NTB stands for Not Too Bright.

ChkbookMechanic · ChkbookMechanic's Garage

I'll take my car to NTB to have them fix a nail in a tire but that is about it. When the techs at the NTB by my house stalled my M5 I was thinking WTF have I gotten myself into? Luckily, they're very good at patching tires... I just know to not take a manual transmission to them.

pwd72s · 06-08-2010, 08:37 PM

What the hell is NTB??? Guess I should be thankful I've never heard of them in Oregon..

cbush · 06-08-2010, 09:06 PM

National Tire and Battery. Pretty ubiquitous in the south and east. Some do a good job. I buy tires from Tire Rack, and have NTB install them. Have had pretty good luck but with places like that, kind of depends on the people running it. Sounds like the one working on Steve's daughters car should be avoided!

masraum · 06-09-2010, 04:19 AM

I used to take tires from Tire Rack to NTB to get them installed. I don't do that any more. At a different NTB from the one in the story above. I took my wife's wheels and new tires in to get the tires mounted and balanced. They couldn't figure out how to get the center caps off of her wheels and ended up driving a screwdriver through them from the back. I figured it out when I got the wheels home and had to take them back to get them to buy us 2 new center caps.

Had new tires put on my daughters Jeep. They broke a stud and had a new one on order.

In the past have had about 4 alignments that had to go back at least once to get them right.

It's just not worth it these days to even try them.

Discount Tire seems to have much better customer service. It's still not perfect, just tons better.

I take my stuff to a small independent Goodyear place. It's 15 mins from the house, but worth it.

cbush · 06-09-2010, 04:27 AM

That is too bad you have had such bad luck with them.

Eric 951 · 06-09-2010, 05:15 AM

Around here as soon as they divorced from Sears, NTB has gone downhill. The idiots gave me a cracked battery for my Rover--the housing was literally cracked at the top as if it was dropped--never again...

widebody911 · widebody911's Garage

I don't think this battery phenom is limited to NTB. I tried to buy a battery for my M3 @ Kragen, which is really O'Reilly now. The first battery he brought out looked nothing like the battery I needed. The 2nd looked like the battery I needed, but appeared to have been hiding in the back room since the cretaceous period. I asked him how long they'd been sitting on that battery; "it came in a couple weeks ago" ORLY? Test it! Sure enough, it was dead, and I mean dead! Like 3v. I got the "let me charge it up for an hour" spiel, and he offered to knock $10 off. Nope. I went down the street to AutoZone - same thing: the first battery was dead as a doornail, but the 2nd one worked. It's even worse when trying to buy 6v batteries OTC; on top of that, you're lucky if the counter-jockey has even heard of a 6v battery. I've had a parts monkey tell me there was no such thing as a 6v battery, despite the fact that I had a 6v core in my hot little hands.

Joeaksa · 06-09-2010, 05:53 AM

Have had good luck with Big O tires in my area. For batteries I go to Costco...

legion · 06-09-2010, 05:56 AM

I buy from the full-service place down the street from me. I look up tires at TireRack.com and have them order what I want.

It's a couple-hundred dollars more expensive than ordering from Tire Rack and having a discount place install the tires, but I know it will get done right the first time. Plus they throw in free tire rotations for the life of the tires. (Yes, I realize I've essentially paid for them upfront.)

The way I look at it is there are two things I won't go cheap with on any vehicle: tires and brakes. Those are the things that need to be in good working order to stop a vehicle. Not going cheap includes paying a little more to ensure they are properly installed.

masraum · 06-09-2010, 06:09 AM

We (me and wife) both drive miatas. Miatas take a special battery (AGM) so I order mine online.

Miatas use an AGM battery that's mounted in the trunk.

Quote:

A VRLA battery (valve-regulated lead-acid battery) is the designation for low-maintenance lead-acid rechargeable batteries. Because of their construction, VRLA batteries do not require regular addition of water to the cells.[1] VRLA batteries are commonly further classified as:

* Absorbed glass mat battery
* Gel battery (gel cell)

These batteries are often colloquially called sealed lead-acid batteries, but they always include a safety pressure relief valve. As opposed to vented (also called flooded) batteries, a VRLA cannot spill its electrolyte if it is inverted. Because VRLA batteries use much less electrolyte (battery acid) than traditional lead-acid batteries, they are also occasionally referred to as an "acid-starved" design.