Bridgestone - No longer cares about customer safety

I purchased a set of Bridgestone MY01 205/40/17 with the date stamp 1215 on the 9th of June 2015 from Bluff Tyres. Two years and approximately 30000km later, I noticed cracks on the side walls of all 4 tyres (see attached pics). I immediately had them replaced. On closer inspection found that the cracks had almost gone through the entire wall of the tyre both inner and outer. All for tyres had exactly the same defect, the side walls on both sides of the tyre had large cracks. I took the tyres back to Bluff Tyres, which they immediately sent back to the supplier, Bridgestone.

A few weeks later, I received a call from Bluff Tyres and was told that Bridgestone accepted 3 of the 4 claims and that they would refund me 50% of the purchase for the 3 tyres and the 4 one failed because it had a plug in it, irrespective of it having exactly the same fault as the other tyres.

To date, I am still waiting for that refund.

I was not happy with this so I called Bridgestone. I was told by the Regional Manager, that this was company policy and that these were not substandard tyres. When I asked him if these tyres were safe for someone to have on their vehicle, after he physically looked at them, and a tyre specialist he was unable to give me a response.

I felt that if Bridgestone supp**** me with a defective set of tyres, then they should have not compromised and reimbursed me with the full value or given me a replacement set, as this was four tyres, probably from the same batch that passed the quality check without being detected or it could have been from an entire bad batch . I was lucky to have seen the cracks before the side wall gave out. It could have been very tragic for both me and my family.

How many other defective tyres are out there on the market from this same batch? People unaware, experiencing unexplained blow outs as a result of this. But from my conversations with Bridgestone, they don’t seem to be bothered by that