Quote:
Originally Posted by Anomalychick
My BMW belonged to my father. He lived on Staten Island, so New York City with some pretty bad roads. The car is equipped with run flat tires, low profile. Apparently hitting a pothole with a low profile run flat is enough to damage the sidewall. In the two years my father had the car, he had 13 flat tires caused by hitting potholes. Some of these potholes actually took out 2 tires simultaneously! This is a known issue with the run flat tires specifically, it doesn't take a whole lot to make a hole in the sidewall. They're also outrageously expensive to replace, maybe roughly $1000 a piece.
His tire protection warranty has now saved him $13,000 in new tires. His tire protection warranty has saved him so much money the dealership has started trying to get out of replacing his tires, one told him he had reached the lifetime limit for warranty payout but after arguing they did replace it anyway because they have to. Another dealership tried to convince him they had the right to refund him the warranty purchase price and void it out.
So for most of you spread out across the country, or those of you with normal tires, no the tire protection plan makes absolutely no sense. But if you live in a northern city with freezes and terrible roads, and you have run flats, the plan will likely save you a fortune.
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You can replace 4 225/40-18 Pirelli runflats on a 228i for less than $1000, currently $220 a tyre on Tire Rack:
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires...omCompare1=yes
The cost difference of runflats compared with equivalent non-runflat tyres is now around 20%.
The issue isn't so much the runflat tyres when it comes to the propensity to be damaged, but more low profile tyres in general.
I generally replace runflats with conventional tyres after the 1st set on my BMWs due to the handling and wear characteristics, but have had several sets so far without a single blowout or need for replacement due to damage up here in our frost heaved and potholed roads in the spring, I do tend to slow down to cross over them if there is no option to avoid, as I do for railway crossings, too.