My sister and I went to look at cars for her. She had found an advertisement on the internet and called the dealership to arrange for the car to be there. When she arrived she learned that the car had gone up 1, 000 in price but they were willing to sell it to her for the price she had on her print out from Autotrader. The car had been marked down for month end.
We inspected the car and the sales person pointed out the new tires on the front. They were Michelin tires and were quite new. While looking at the car I notced the rear tires were Bridgestone. Interesting.
The car was taken for a test drive and all seemed well so we went inside to work out the details. We were shown the Toyota Certified inspection report which listed everything that had been checked. I asked about the mismatched tires and was told that "They were close enough" but of we wanted to we could purchase new tires for the back to match for $256.00 plus taxes. We were shown the computerized service records and the Michelins were only 4, 000 km old (approx. 2, 500 miles old) My sister agreed to this.
Being the helpful type I sent an email to Toyota suggesting they could improve their Toyota Certified by having all the tires match. They told me that all tires were suppose to match and would look into it.

The result of Toyota's investigation was that the cost of the tires was an upgrade to the Michelin tires. It makes no sense to me. A cost to upgrade to matching tires when all 4 tires are suppose to match from the beginning? If there was a choice to have matching tires put on at no cost that was not mentioned. If the car had been Toyotatown Certified, okay that is the way things are. But this car was Toyota Certified and they don't seem to take their certification seriously. If the tires did not meet specifications what else on the checklist is suspect?