Is "Buy 3 Tyres, Get the 4th Free" Actually a Deal?

You've seen the signs. Buy three tyres, get the fourth free. 4 for the price of 3. It sounds like a no-brainer. A whole tyre, gone from the bill.

Before you book it in anywhere, it's worth knowing how these deals are built. Because sometimes the free tyre is genuinely free. And sometimes you've just paid for it three times over without noticing.

Here's how to tell the difference, and how to make sure you're getting the best total price, whoever you buy from.

The maths behind a "free" tyre

Here's the part most people never stop to check: a tyre shop sets its own prices.

There's no national price list that says a tyre has to cost a set amount. So when a shop advertises "buy 3, get the 4th free," there's nothing stopping it from quietly lifting the price of the first three to cover the cost of the fourth.

The discount was real on paper. The saving wasn't. That's the trick. The deal is only as good as the price it's discounting from, and you can't see that starting price.

This is exactly the kind of "inflated price, artificial discount" tactic the ACCC has warned shoppers about across all sorts of retail. Tyres are no different.

When a deal is the real thing

There's one situation where a tyre promotion is genuinely a saving: when the offer comes from the manufacturer, not the shop.

When Goodyear (or another major brand) runs a national promotion, like a cashback or a rebate, that offer is funded by the manufacturer and runs the same way at every store in the country. The shop isn't quietly lifting its prices to pay for it, because the shop isn't the one paying for it. The brand is.

That's the difference:

So the question to ask isn't "how big is the discount?" It's "who's actually paying for it?"

How to read any tyre deal in 30 seconds

Next time you see a tyre offer, ours or anyone's, ask:

1. What's the out-the-door price for all four? Not per tyre. Not "after the discount." The full total, fitted and balanced, ready to drive away.
2. Is the offer from the brand or the shop? A manufacturer cashback is a real saving. A shop's own "free tyre" might not be.
3. What's included? Fitting, balancing, new valves, old-tyre disposal: these add up. A cheap headline price with everything bolted on top isn't cheap.

Get the total, on those terms, and you can compare any two deals honestly.

What we do differently

We don't do smoke and mirrors. No inflated sticker price so we can "discount" it back to normal and call it a special.

We quote you a straight, sharp out-the-door price: tyres, fitting, balancing, the lot. And we back it with the Goodyear name and a workshop that's been on the same Blacktown corner since 1959.

FAQs

Same workshop. Same Blacktown corner. Since 1959.