highmaints4

I have a 2000 S4 (12 mos. old) which came with those wonderful Potenza RE040 tires. One died from the known "defect" (sidewall bubbling...well, that's because they're such high performance, low profile tires...cough, cough) and I went to the dealer and had it replaced with a new Potenza RE040 and ended up initally paying $244. 1 month later ANOTHER RE040 dies (yes, folks thats 2 out of 5 tires!!!). So do i fish out another $244 and replace yet a second tire with the same Potenza RE040 tire for $244 or do i simply avoid future catastrophies and replace all the tires?? I opted to replace all 4 tires with Potenza S-02 Z-rated tires and pay the Audi dealer to mount them.

Then shortly after paying $900 to replace what I consider to be crappy tires, I get a letter from Audi stating that they would replace free of charge all RE040's that were damaged and were under warranty...meaning that I could have simply kept my original RE040's and Audi would have kept on replacing all my dud tires for FREE!!! Audi refunded me the cost of the 2 tires that died but now they're telling me it's my fault I didn't keep replacing the tires with the original RE040's. WELL IF I HAD KNOWN I WAS GOING TO GET THAT LETTER ONLY WEEKS AFTER PAYING $900 THEN I WOULDN'T HAVE REPLACED THEM WITH S-02'S AND I WOULDN'T BE OUT $900 (NOT THE $444 THAT AUDI REFUNDED ME)!!!!

What does everyone think??

-annoyed with Audi

DrHandball

I would contact AoA and let them know what your situation is. US car makers USUALLY will reimburse you for repairs that you had done that were originally out of warranty and later covered by a TSB such as the one that Audi issued for the bad RE040s.

Just my $0.02