Toyota Certified Prius v tires question

I'm a newbie here.
We (my wife and I) just bought (within the past month and a half) a 2014 Prius v wagon from our Toyota Certified Used dealer, with only 24,000 miles on it. (Lease return after 3 years.)
First of all, let me say we are very pleased with the car so far. I had a question about the tires, however, and wondered if anyone here might be able to help, or have any suggestions.
Even though the car had only 24,000 miles on it, it came with a brand new set of Yokohama AVID Envigor tires (215/50R17 95V). (V rating: up to 149 mph. Even though the car won't go anywhere near that fast!) ;-)
(This is actually one of the reasons I bought the car.) These tires were brand new (and I mean REALLY brand new - the little rubber threads from the molding process were still sticking up from the tread! I have photos...) And the salesperson told us that they were new tires, and that they had installed them there at Toyota.
In the glove compartment was a warranty brochure for the tires, -or so I thought. Upon closer look, the warranty flyer was for Toyo tires, and I realized that this was most likely left over from the original OEM tires that came installed on the car when it was first sold new. (They just hadn't had a chance to clean out the glove compartment.)
I looked up these Yokohama Envigor tires on the web, and it looks like they normally come with a 5-year or 60,000 mile warranty when you buy them from a normal "authorized" tire dealer. Plus free replacement for first year or 2/32" of wear, etc.
Okay. Now here is the puzzling thing which we simply can't understand: We asked about the warranty on the new tires, but were told by the Toyota Certified Used salesperson that there was none (i.e. on these new Yokohamas that came with the car).
Has anyone here ever heard of anything like this? I have never gotten a new set of tires that didn't have some kind of warranty on them, -even if only from the tire manufacturer. I realize that Toyota would like to sell us their $750. tire and wheel extended warranty (which we looked over and decided against, because my wife and I felt there were too many exclusions!) -but it seems to us that when you get a Toyota Certified Used car with new tires and a "bumper to bumper warranty" as they advertise, there should be some kind of coverage, or at the very least, some sort of recourse, on the tires if anything goes wrong.
I'm just trying to understand how Toyota Certified Used Sales works, and what their relationship with Yokohama Tire Co. might be, -and trying to understand the policy or the logic behind this. Does anyone here understand how this is supposed to work?
If you were me, would you:
1) Go back and keep badgering them until you get a satisfactory answer.
2) Try and contact the consumer advocate at the Toyota Dealership.
3) Go straight to Toyota Corporate.
4) Bite the bullet and buy the extended tire and wheel warranty for $750.
or-
5) Count my blessings that I got a brand new set of tires with the car. ;-)
Like I say, we are overall very pleased with the car otherwise, but just incredibly puzzled about out how a brand new set of tires can not come with a warranty of some sort. -Really just trying to understand how this is supposed to work.
Thanks for any tips or advice in advance~
~KaZam

 

Thanks rjparker. I may well start there, as you suggest.

I would think that even in the highly unlikely event that it was the original leaseholder who bought the tires (and it would have had to have been right when they turned the car in, -and why would they do that?), -there should still be some carryover of the tire warranty to subsequent owners. -I'm wondering why there isn't at least SOME documentation on these new tires we got with the car, -like who installed them, and when. (-We truly received none.) But it's pretty obvious that Toyota installed these, or had them installed, -and that they were brand new when we got the car. (That was our understanding, based on what the salesperson told us. Also, you could tell just by looking at the tires that they had not been driven on, -at least, not more than perhaps a few miles.)

The thing that is really kind of bugging me is why this salesperson (-or the Toyota dealership for that matter-) is not more forthcoming on WHY there is no warranty protection on these new tires that they installed. My experience, and I think most of the public's, is that when you get new tires you get a warranty with them. -Also, when you pay a premium for a supposedly "Certified" car, -that supposedly has all these "protections" for the buyer-, (-"bumper to bumper coverage", as they say-), -why would there be no protections on one of the most critical parts of that "Certified" car - the tires? Aren't they also really an essential part of the "power train" - which IS warranteed? My primary concern here, as I imagine would also be anybody's, is about recourse. -Who is accountable if anything does go wrong with the tires? Maybe I'm overlooking or missing something important or essential here about "Certified" car sales, -but I truly would just like to understand.

 

@mikefocke:

<<But why the heck would a v need tires at 24k miles? Are the 17's really that bad? Did you do a CarFax on the car?>>

Excellent questions. I just figured it was probably because the original tires were scuffed up from parking too close to the curb or something like that. The Certified program actually specifies things like "all four tires must be of same brand, size, tread design, speed, and load rating," -and there are other requirements they have (174-point inspection for Certified Hybrids). So reading that, there are a number of possible scenarios - one might be where, say, the original Toyo OEM tires were still good or still had plenty of tread left, but maybe one was found by the Certified inspecting mechanic to have a nail or something else in the sidewall, which would make it unrepairable. -Or maybe for any number of other reasons the tires either didn't look great, or had uneven wear because of not being rotated regularly, or otherwise weren't in the best shape at 24K. Then it would probably be much easier for Toyota just to replace all four tires in order to meet the Certified standard. Anyway, that was what I was thinking at the time.

We did get a CarFax report before buying the car and I did go over it. (Toyota Certified provides a free CarFax report when you are looking at their Certified cars; the Certified salesperson told us the report has to be good or the car can't be Toyota Certified.)

We have bought a couple of new Toyotas over the years (and a number of used ones.) Our first new Toyota we bought was a 1990 Camry V6 DX with 5 speed manual transmission (boy was that ever a great car!) It came with Yokohama tires as original equipment. As I remember, the Yokohamas we got with that car were pretty good tires overall. I mean, they certainly didn't go 50,000 miles before we had to replace them (-what OEM tire does?) -and I seem to remember there was no treadwear mileage figure given in the warranty, but they were still pretty good tires otherwise, as I remember, so far as handling and cornering and traction and noise and wet weather grip and all that.
-Maybe not Pirelli or Michelin or Bridgestone quality, but pretty good for what they were.

I did some research and read a number of reviews on these Yokohama Avid Envigors as well. Like any tire, you have folks that just love them, and others who think they are just terrible, awful tires. (Sometimes it's really hard to see how they can be talking about the same tire!) Sure, there are probably better tires, (-and certainly there are worse!) - and I'm sure Toyota isn't going to put the most expensive or highest quality tire on the car when they have no idea who will be driving it or what their expectations are (just like any other car maker/dealer.)

We're starting out with 10/32" tread depth on these tires. It will be fairly easy for me over time to see how they are holding up, as far as treadwear. Because they still aren't quite broken in (we only have a little more than 1K miles on them yet) I'm waiting to see how they handle, what sort of mileage we are getting and how noisy they will be, and what other problems we encounter with them. (Currently we seem to be getting about 40 mpg avg from this Prius v on combined freeway and city driving. That's with 40 psi in these tires.) (By the way, that's the way the tires came, read on.)

One of the other things, my wife noticed, is that these tires apparently had a problem with flatspotting after the car had been parked for a day or so (the weather has also been very cold here and the car was parked outside during that time.) The flatspotting seemed to go away after she drove it about a mile to a service station and adjusted the air in the tires. She did discover, however, that whoever installed the tires had put 40 psi in them, so she lowered the pressure to specs given in the driver side door sill, 33 front 32 rear. (I checked after she did this, the next day, with the tires cold, just to make sure, and they did indeed have just what she said she adjusted them to.) I'm not sure whether it was just driving the car for awhile that took care of the problem or the letting of some air out of the tires, -or both, that fixed the roughness problem, but so far I haven't noticed it myself. I did notice, upon doing a web search, that some other people have complained of flatspotting problems with these tires.

I am not too overly concerned with the 40 psi my wife discovered in the tires, because the max inflation psi marked on the side of the tires is 50, and I know that a lot of Prius owners inflate a bit on the high side to take advantage of the increased mpg you can get from doing so. (40 psi does, actually, seem a bit much, however. I have also found that most tire installers tend to overinflate, for whatever reason).

I am curious what sort of inflation pressures Prius v owners here are having good results with. (I do seem to remember someone here on Prius Chat actually recommending 41 front and 38 rear, -for a Generation II or III I think. As a general rule, I myself will usually do about 3 psi over what the manufacturer recommends, just to give a little mileage edge, and to compensate for the gradual loss of air over time (-I just readjusted the tires in the "v" to 36 front 35 rear, which is 3 psi above the recommended. To me 33 front 32 rear seems a bit low. I understand that the psi figures given by Toyota are often for best ride and/or handling, -and not necessarily for best gas mileage. -Or best tire wear, for that matter. Often I have found that when I have tried to use the manufacturer's recommendations, the tires will wear most on the edges, -as if they were under-inflated. I do regularly check the air in the tires.)

@rdgrimes - I found your comments especially helpful, about what I can expect from a dealer and about the quality of these tires:

<<Its always been my understanding that dealerships NEVER stand behind tires in any way, you're on your own.>>
<<These are not super tires in any case, you may well decide you want to be rid of them. (I would).>>
<<Screw the $750 warranty, for $1K you have a new set of much better tires.>>

And yes, I actually had realized that for what I would be paying for the $750 "tire and wheel warranty", I could go out and buy myself another set of (pretty good) tires!

I really was just trying to find out what came with the territory. It's been quite a few years since we have bought a car from a dealer. (Our used Toyota's we have bought in the past we always bought from private parties. This car is the exception - we decided to do it differently this time.) It is helpful to know, from others' experience, just what to expect from dealers these days!

One of the things I also just heard/learned, from one of the Prius review sites, is that front tires on Priuses in general tend to wear faster because of the regenerative braking. (Also I noticed that @bat4255 hinted at that in his post.) I would also tend to think this would be an issue with the Prius "v", as it is a larger and heavier car. Anyone here have any experience with that? Thanks!

Thank you all! And for any additional insights you might care to provide!