Categories
Automotive Shopping

Ordering Tires Online

I’ve been meaning to order tires for my Lotus online for some time now since the local Michelin dealer didn’t carry tire sizes that fit my car. But I had heard two things:

1) The Michelin dealer wouldn’t order tires for you if they didn’t carry them
2) If you order tires online they’ll get stuck in customs and it would be very difficult to clear them

I didn’t follow up on the rumors right away since my tires were still in fairly good condition back then. But the new season at Kuwait Motor Town started already and now after 8 track days and 17,000KM mileage on the same set of tires, I knew it would be time to change them soon so I needed to find a solution.

This post is to clear the two rumors above which turned out to be false.

The Michelin Dealer
First thing I did was pass by the Michelin dealer on Canada Dry street to see if they would be willing to order the following tires for me:

Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 – 215/45 R17 x2
Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 – 285/30 R18 x2

They told me they could and I had two options, either ship them by sea freight which could take anywhere between 4 to 8 weeks, or by air which would take up to 2 weeks. They took my email and sent me a proposal that came to the following:

Total for 4 tires if shipped by air: KD540
Total for 4 tires if shipped by sea: KD374

Ordering Tires Online
I decided to check and see how much my tires would cost if I ordered them online myself and shipped them straight to Kuwait. I found my tires on Camskill.co.uk for a great price and they would be willing to ship them directly to Kuwait using FedEx. The total with shipping came out to just KD336 so I placed an order and within 5 days I had the tires. They cleared customs with no issue except for the fact I had to pay FedEx KD28 for the customs fees and clearance cost. The total in the end came out to KD364. So KD10 cheaper than the dealers sea freight cost but arrived in just a few days instead of a few weeks.

So if you need specific tires that aren’t available locally I would head to the local dealer first and see if they would order them for you or alternatively, you could order them online if you were in a hurry like me or just didn’t want to bother with Shuwaikh.

36 replies on “Ordering Tires Online”

Just curious, Why didn’t you order through Postaplus. They had a offer 10% off for uk orders last few days. Also most of the times you can find tires with dealers in UAE which are unavailable locally. i guess it would be cheaper getting it from there.

If I shipped them to PostaPlus it would have cost me around 160KD for shipping from UK to Kuwait and take around 10 days. That’s also not including the shipping cost from camskill to my UK postaplus mailbox nor is it including the 20% VAT that I would have had to pay if I shipped it to my UK Mailbox.

Shipping them directly to Kuwait via FedEx cost me KD142, it took less than half the time it would then if I shipped it to my UK mailbox and because it’s being exported, I didn’t have to pay the 20% VAT on the tires.

Shipping Directly Saves you the VAT, usually 4 Tyres cost 300 GBP and 5 Tyres 400 GBP for shipping alone, but considering the tires prices themselves are way cheaper than Kuwait it makes it worth worth the trouble and the 2 days ordering process.

Great info, thanks! Interesting size of tires for your Lotus also.

Wish I had known this earlier though, as I had also believed that either, 1) the price would be exorbitant if I bought tires online to be delivered to Kuwait, and 2) that there would be major issues at customs. I had recently purchased a set of Michelin Pilot Sports 2 from the local dealer a couple of weeks back but really wanted the Cups though.

Regards customs, I thought the issue might be with regards certification of the tires, as I have heard that every tire sold in Kuwait must carry a certain certificate in order that it be usable here in Kuwait? I learned this when I tried to order certain tires through Al Mailem, but was informed of this, and that they would not be prepared to get one-off certificates as too lengthy (and costly) a process.

Anyway, a good result

Yeah so first thing he did was check if they had the certificate for the tires and they did. I think certificates are connected to the model of the tire and not size and since they already get cup 2’s then i guess it fell under that.

Thanks.

Mine were PS4S’s, not the PS2’s that I mentioned.

I suppose one benefit with a local purchase is the accidental damage insurance that they offer for the tires, or can they offer this type of insurance for tires bought elsewhere I wonder?

PS4S is a better all around tyre than Cup 2 if you do any driving on normal streets. I’ve had track focused tyres before and the noise + how quickly they dry is not worth it for the marginal extra grip that if you only have 1 set of tires. if you have dedicate wheels then cup 2 is no brainier.

Thanks! That puts my mind to rest on my purchase.

All in, very good tires and much better than the P Zeros that I had previously.

The PS4/S is an amazing tyre, congrats on your purchase and regarding the insurance it is only provided by tyres bought from the dealer here.

Just checked my records and so for the PS4S’s:

2 x 255/40/19 &
2 x 275/35/19

I paid 435 at Tyre Plus including tire insurance.

Not great, but not too bad.

Only annoying point was that they had used a hammer drill to tighten my locking wheen bolts, and so a couple days later, when one of the bolts, along with with the locking nut had to be removed, there was no way to do so without causing damage to each of these.

I love my Cup 2’s and have had zero issues with them so would not want PS4’s. 8 track days and 17,000km and they still have good thread (picture on top). My previous Exige had pzeros and those just wore out so quickly I prefer these so much more

Hi Mark,
I tried to order the cup 2 tires from camskill but they declined my order and said they dont ship to Kuwait. How did you manage to get them delivered?

Not sure what u did different than me, did you email them first and tell them what tires you wanted and to quote u on shipping? Cuz that’s what u need to do first then they’ll tell u what u need to do (basically you have to buy credit worth the shipping amount and add it to your cart with the tires)

Good afternoon

Sorry for the late reply. We have temporarily suspended shipping to Kuwait as we are sorting out some custom issues

Kindest regards

Brian

Are these online tires trustworthy? Are the new (production date) and without fault? I rarely trust anything online. Also would Michelin here take responsibility for them if shit hit the fan and also put them onto your car for free?

i think the place is located next door to the factory cuz the tires came fresh out of the oven produced just a couple of months back. Camskill is a popular site just looks like it was designed in the 90s.

They will not install them for free, you have to pay them for installation.

I got my tires couple days ago and they were Michelin PS4 also from camskill. the dealer don’t carry PS4 in the size I wanted. The dealer wanted 25 KD for installation but managed to get it for 20. they were fairly new and fresh 3819. Got them slightly less expensive than the dealer and it took 8 days total from the day I ordered.

When you say dealer, do you mean your car dealer or the tire dealer? Just asking as generally car dealers have quite a mark-up when buying tires through them.

Also, out of interest, what size tires are yours?

Tyre Dealer ‘TYRE PLUS’, buying from car dealers is just useless unless it is an OE tyre and those camskill stock them. I been an avid customer of camskill and just will support them over tires here since they are mostly cheaper and definitely fresher tyres.

I think mine were 225/40/18. it costs me 260 all around with shipping and installation.

I paid 13.5 KD to clear 4 tyres using Fedex. what’s funny is I paid 17 KD to clear shoes from UPS! even though the shoes costs way less than the tyres. I’m not sure how longer can we put through UPS over here.

Have you compared them to other customs or are you just having a rant cause you actually have to pay for a government service like in all other countries?

Dear Mr Mark,

Thank you for being a MICHELIN customer and sharing your experience with your followers.

We, KAICO ,( Kuwait Automotive Imports Co WLL – Alshaya & Alsagar ) are the MICHELIN
Tyre distributors
in Kuwait for the last 70 years and would like to share our view point with your followers

1-Tires purchased on line may not conform to the Gulf standards
2-The ‘Speed” and “ temperature” conditions will also be lower
3-As per Manufacturer recommendation we should fix approved Gulf standards complying tires through us
4-Each tire has a 4 square inch foot print between your car , passengers and the road
Hence we should not compromise our lives by fitting non compliant tires
5-The Michelin WARRANTY stands valid only if the right tires are mounted
5-We offer our customers ‘free tire health checks” and “free technical advices” during the life- cycle of the tires
6-We continue to offer value added door to door and extended warranty services and many others

In case any customer has a price issue it would be worthwhile to compare other features and not size alone.

If any customer finds prices on line lower we strongly recommend contacting us to offer a suitable solution.

Contact:
Relin Mathew Thomas
Assistant Manager – Tires ( Michelin, BFGoodrich, Tigar )
Mobile – +965-95575700
Email: [email protected]

I did the same thing for my car. Couldn’t find semi-slick tires anywhere locally so I ended up buying them online from the states. It was like 250kd shipped for 4 R888R tires.

That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing your experience. I was hesitant to order tyres online.

17,000km is a lot of mileage for a limited edition lotus

that’s what i did with my 69 Corvette i ordered from summitracing.com 4 redline classic tires and came by air from Turkish airline “as the price was good”the procedure was easy until it reached Kuwait imports where i hated myself that day. in short i had to come and go and go back between customs and Public Authority for Industry just because “system error” for bringing tire and each one of the employees from both sides saying “it’s the other guy’s fault” then i found a quick (WASTA) and was done in 15 minute instead of 3 hours

i think if i used a company that delivered everything to my house it wouldn’t have happened. i learned my lesson if you don’t have a WASTA in Customs don’t even bring a bag of potatoes

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *