I'm taking my car in for it's 15k service. The service advisor informs me they rotate but do not balance the tires. Wouldn't you say or agree that the tires should be balanced at this point in timeor mileage level?

 

Unless you are feeling some vibration or have another indication that something is wrong, NO

 

I've been rebalancing the tires at 20,000 miles (rotating at 5,000 miles) and it seems to smooth out the ride. Tires do not wear evenly and the rebalance helps in maintaining the ride. Having said that, in my case, the tires only get one rebalance in their life on the car. When they are down to 4/32" - 3/32" tread, no point in a rebalance as they will be replaced very soon.

 

i would rebalance at 15k for the sake of tread wear. Try one of those places like Discount Tire Co. that offer tire lifetime rebalacing for free. Just pay once up front and do it every 5k miles.

 

I would avoid the dealer as much as possible.

For my gf's car they wanted $179.00+tax for changing the air filters!

I went online, bought both OEM filters (cabin and engine filters) for $32.00 TOTAL, changed it myself, and felt happy to have saved over a hundred bucks.

Second, the dealer wanted $59.99 to do a rotation. $60 to do a ROTATION, WTF? (They also did not offer to do balance for my case.)

So instead I went to Discount Tire Co., where they did it for $19.99, and even threw in a lifetime FREE rotation and balance for the life of my gf's Lexus.

Dealers suck.

 

Esp Lexus dealers. Their pricing is nuts. They forget that we have ES350 cars, not
LS460L models.

 

No kidding.

Not even my Mercedes-Benz dealer rapes me that much for my car. I get shocked at something each and every time I go to my gf's Lexus dealer when we bring the car in.

I don't see how they can justify charging practically $200.00 to do something that requires $30 worth of parts, and is essentially, a plug-n-play job that takes 5 minutes...........

That made me slightly angry, lol.