Tires: diagonal tire wear, side tire, couple hundred

Question
I just replaced all 4 of my tires yestarday.  The rear driver side tire had a distinct diagonal wear pattern which I assumed was because the alignment was off (probably because my boyfriend hits every pothole on the road but we'll not go into that).  When I bought the tires, I was told that my problem is I need new struts and I need to replace them within "a couple hundred miles" or the tire will wear again.  Question 1: Is it a problem with the struts? Question 2: How many miles can I go before I start seeing wear?

Answer
Rose,

It might be that the struts are bad - that is one of the causes for diagonal wear - but I tend to lean towards the alignment.

".....How many miles can I go before I start seeing wear?......."

Depends on how bad the alignment is. (or the struts)

A couple hundred? I won't disagree with that.

The question now becomes - Do you do an alignment and see if the problem returns   --OR--  Change the struts and then do the alignment (which you would have do it when changing the struts).

I'm a gambler, so I would go for the alignment and see.  

And I would keep a very close eye on the tires after the alignment - unless the alignment values clearly show out of spec values on the position in question.

BTW, some vehicles will develop diagonal wear if the tires aren't rotated regularly.