There is the saying "Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me"; I am ashamed to tell you about the bad experience I had with a Firestone car care center. But I am putting my shame aside so that others can avoid it.

The story begins with my reading that someone said that he let his car aligned at a shop because it had a Hunter alignment system. I have then done a research on Hunter and thought that with such a good equipment which has Mercedes specs and assists the mechanic all the way thru the procedure, any shop could do the job to the manufacturer specs.

Having a coupon for an alignment at Firestone and getting the info that they also use Hunter alignment system I had the alignment done for my Mercedes at the Irving, TX store on 12/22/09 and received the "before" and "after" measurements, which are different.
I have been charged $59,90 for the job. After that I noticed that the car is now pulling to the right, which was not the case before the alignment.
Two days later I made an inquiry at the shop and got to know that only a check has been done but no adjustment since the camber correction bolts need to be replaced. The job would be over $500.- which I declined. (the camber bolts replacement had been also mentioned at the first time, but not that no adjustment was made)
The mechanic could not satisfactorily explain to me why the measurements were different and suggested a tire rotation to see if the problems got better.
I got a partial refund for the not carried out alignment
(according to the mechanic in charge he had told the service counter to charge me only $24,90 for the check, and I was willing to consider that was a mistake with the bill).

I agreed to the tire rotation and paid $20.- for it on Christmas morning.
At home I took a look and to my surprise the two Goodyear tires at the front are still at the front, and the two Michelin tires remain at the rear as before.
Had I had 4 tires of same model I would not have noticed it. My under standing is always that a tire rotation means two at the front going to the rear and vice versa, and it can be done two ways: either
1. left rear to left front, right rear to right front and vice versa
or
2. X-wise left rear to right front, right rear to left front and vice versa

I called the shop and was told that only the front wheels are rotated and the rear wheels untouched. I was told to bring my car back for rotation again.

I feel cheated by the shop two times in a row:

First I was incorrectly fully charged for a partially done job, namely no alignment only a check.
That the measurements are diffrent (before and after what?) although supposedly nothing was done on the car remains a question.
Secondly the tire rotation was done not in a way it is supposed to be done, moreover only halfway, meaning for two front wheels but I was charged the full price again.

I really lost my trust to that store in particular and to the name Firestone in general.

 

Wow man, that is ridiculous. Does it matter where you go to get your car aligned? My steering pulls slightly to the right.

 

One of the services I used the dealer for. There may be some independent shops which have the correct equipment but you'll have to track them down. MB recommends having all four wheels aligned simultaneously.

I paid $170 including free pastry, decent coffee and car wash. It was done in 1 1/2 hrs as promised.

 

the hunter but I have heard from other members that they don't have the bar and I called a few to confirm.So even if they could install camber eccentrics they could not do a proper align.
At least you learned.It was a cheap lesson all in all

 

Alignments are one of the trickiest things to deal with.. If every suspension component on your car is straight and all the bushings are in good condition, and the tech puts the car "in the green" or "with-in specs" it will still have a slight pull to the right due to road crown. This is the slant on the road which helps direct water and such off the road. Different states/roads/counties/etc will have different levels of road crown, so you may feel it sometimes or not notice it at all. If you are really concerned about it and always feel it, you can sometimes mention it to the place or tech doing the alignment and he can sometimes point the steering off to the left slightly if he knows what he's doing to help adjust for the road crown in your area.