That does sound more like it, at first ,a lot of shops were getting away with it ,but I think as we keep going to shops, they got the idea.......my first tire swap , that was tried on me ,but i had my own parts.

 

I just bought some tires and went to discount tire and they wanted to charge me 40 dollars for new stems for the tpms's on all four rims. I told them they werent touching the tpms and only changing the tires and balancing them. I had to argue with the guy and almost got in a fight with the jackass. He said it was manditory. I told him he was full of shi... Discount tire is a big scammer on those too. They literally were not going to even mess with the valves or stems or tpms but to put air back in the tire. Then the guy tells me they were going to charge me 20 to dismount the old tires, and 20 each to mount the new tire so that was a total of 160 to swap out tires and balance. Keep in mind this is a new 2010 and all I did was get some new tires from somewhere else that were e rated and taller 20's. I went down the road to a local used tire shop and had it all done for 40 bucks out the door. Discount tire is a scam with the tpms. Plain and simple.

 

I bought new tires at Discount Tire for my Ram when it was only 2 months old. They didn't say a word about the TPMS sensors and no additional charges. BTW, I kept the take-offs, so it wasn't like they were letting me slide due to their ability to re-sell them.

I have had issues with one of their stores when it came to mounting newly purchased tires on a light duty trailer. They would not mount them on the trailer since they were not "rated" as trailer tires, even though the specs on the new tires were better than their "trailer" rated ties.