Well I would hope the tires were evenly worn, as they are brand new... and same with the rims not being bent. I mean its a tire shop, so I try to have a little faith they would catch something like a bent rim, or the hub-centric requirement.
They are aftermarket steel wheels, I can't even imagine what a set of factories would cost even on ebay
I guess I could have tried local junkyards but, eh..
So here is where I currently stand.
I went to Firestone on Monday, they could not do the alignment because left inner tie rod/end has play in it and needs to be replaced. They wanted $300 to do that so naturally I said no thanks and went to my local mechanic for a quote when I got home. $150 installed, parts and labor as I figured it would be. He can't do the work until the 23rd though. But I'm going to ask him to inspect the suspension as well, although I'm pretty sure Firestone would have found anything else wrong - I asked if there was any difference between the check they do for alignment and if I just walk in and ask them to inspect it and they said nope.
Nobody seemed to think the tie rod issue could be the culprit as far as the vibration goes. I doubt wheel bearings would cause this (but what do I know) but I will have my mechanic inspect those too. I've longed complained about a noise from the left front, and only recently with these tire issues has the left front started making a growling sound when turning the wheel significantly to the right (back to the left alleviates it). Although its only really audible between about 25 - 40 mph. Pitch does change with vehicle speed from what I can tell, so I'm suspecting a bearing.
I'll be in the area for work again tomorrow, so I plan to stop back at Discount Tire when I'm done and just check in with them regarding the situation. Ideally I want to have any work done on the vehicle before I start hassling them about exchanging for a different set of fresh tires or something like that.
Since their last visit the car has actually calmed down somewhat further, but still very clearly has some kind of issue with a consistent oscillation occuring at the same interval. The vibrating/bump/shaking whatever you want to call it, now chooses to mostly hide until approaching 65 - 75mph or faster. Sometimes I swear I can feel a side to side / shimmy type vibration through the seat, mostly in the left-side that feels like it is coming from the back. I believe this is where they may have moved the standout "lighted" weight wheel to. But I guess it could be mind-tricks.
Still it has somewhat calmed down since they did the initial position swap on the tires. So based on this information it feels like either
A) uneven tires out of the mold
B) a single bad tire out of the mold
I don't want to go through demanding they exchange out the tires as defective just yet, even though they seemed to indicate they probably would do that. I want to at least try to have any repairs done first, then see how the car drives. Maybe I'm just being too considerate, but I don't want to be that asshole customer who kept coming back and it turns out the car was the problem not the wheels or tires they sold me.