Nick Shill

Hi Gareth Just heard that Dunlop will not send my tyres back because once they have issued a credit note they do not want to be exposed to me sending them back to claim another credit!! Lucky I have photos of them all!! Nick

Hi Gareth Dunlop have agreed a credit to cover the amount of unused rubber. This has been sent across to the dealer that fitted the tyres, and I have a bill for £753.00 minus the credit note to pay to the dealer. Great. My problem is that Audi are specifying these tyres knowing full well there is an issue with their integrity. Dunlop are supplying them with a track record (clearly shown on this forum) of failures not only on Audis, but Jaguar and other manufacturers. First of all it is clear that someone somewhere won't be as lucky and end up having a catastrophic failure at high speed. I am pursuing a full refund and either Audi to stop recommending these tyres or Dunlop to redesign. Audi are appearing to suggest that tracking, inflation or driving style are factors, and Dunlop try say there was a bad batch. This isn't sorting out the actual problem of safety. On a car that cost in excess of £50,000.00 with well over a £1000.00 worth of rubber you would expect it to be able to operate safely up to the national speed limit of both the UK, and its home country of Germany. We are not talking about a Ford Ka or a Nissan Micra here. I am talking to the Dunlop Technical Department, I'll let you know how far I get. Nick

Having read the posts on this forum I have to say that I have had exactly the same problem. Just approaching 30,000 miles on the second set of Dunlop Maxx GT tyres my MOT tester phones to tell me the tyres are a failure and I need to take action. 33% delamination right down to the steel braiding on the front drivers side and a large blister, with serious cracking on both rears. All this on the inside edge so there is no chance of me seeing this on a visual inspection. I am lucky that we haven't experienced a blow out as some of your contributors have experienced, but this car is specified to have these tyres and also quite capable of travelling up to 150mph on a German Autobahn. I wouldn't be driving that fast but failure at this speed doesn't need much imagination as to the outcome. Our tyre supplier wasn't surprised because he had an Audi A7 only the previous week with the same problem!! Dunlop have agreed to pay the unused amount of the tyre, saying that I have had the use of just around 9000 miles. Problem I see is that they know full well that this is an ongoing problem yet they are still fitting them and Audi are still specifying them!! I am having the damaged carcasses returned and will be speaking to Audi regarding this and if I don't get any satisfaction BBC Watchdog may be the next port of call. Watch this space!