Thank You BMW NA! Customer for Life!

Glad you had a good experience. A lot boils down to dealers maybe too.

I'm not sure I'll own a BMW again, I may someday but not anytime soon. At first my dealer was great, then I began to notice an attitude of "you should be grateful we're servicing your car", it was always difficult to get a loaner (I had to schedule sometimes weeks in advance of service to lock one down), I should also mention if you drive a 3-series you get a 3-series or an x3, eventually they only supplied me something from Enterprise down the street.

Then while I was still under warranty they declared that no one other than those having service for multiple days were entitled to rentals. I got in a shouting match with the dealership manager about how ****ty their customer service is and that their entire business model was obviously set up by someone with low intelligence and had no idea how to operate a business. I'll also throw in the peeling interior bits that happened surprisingly quickly.

Now I have an Audi and the service is far superior. I can schedule the week of an get a loaner, and they loan me just about every car in the fleet and all I drive is a little A3.

 

Same experience here - I've been impressed, although my last three Audis haven't needed anything more than routine maintenance.

OP: Glad to hear the happy ending. In general I've had good experiences with Merc, BMW and Audi.

 

Jason - did you go to BMW Houston North?
About 2 months ago I took my '99 528i there to get it aligned (thought it was sagging rear springs causing excess camber, wanted an "expert" opinion). After I checked in the service manager explained how he was brought on about 6 months ago, and how much he's had to rebuild the service organization due to his predecessors' neglect and ****ty attitude.
Since he couldn't guarantee my car would be done that day (there were only 3 techs out of 30 or something that he wanted to work on my "classic") so gave me my choice of loaners; I picked a new 535d. Fun powerslider
He called me later in the day on speakerphone with the tech in his office, who told me my rear ball joints were shot so it wouldn't stay in spec. They made me a quote with several options for the repair, totally understanding I probably wouldn't spend ~$4000 with them to do the work but spending a good amount of time on me anyway.
I picked up my car (nicely washed) the next morning, and just installed $600 worth of OEM spec rear suspension parts myself last weekend.
Anyway, sorry you had a bad experience it sounds like you weren't alone but things are apparently different there now.
Glad the OP got satisfaction. BMW NA isn't always so kind on out of warranty work. Just ask all the E39 owners with bad VANOS seals that BMW refuses to correctly fix or assist in any way other than selling new $700 units that will fail again....

 

Glad to hear the manager was straight up with you. I had always heard good things about bmw north so im surprised to hear it wasn't run well. The last dealer I went to while I had the 335 was the dealer on I10 (bmw west I think ) and I did feel a little bit frienfriendlier atmosphere, although I had always heard they were terrible to deal with.

I bought my bmw at bmw midtown. My dad was there to help me through the process since it was my first new car buying experience and he was impressed at the time.

I'll note that my car wouldn't start Friday (probably the best possible day for that) and I called sewells road side assistance, my dad picked me up and took me to their house so I could drive my mom's car to work and my dad waited for the tow truck. They said they'd arrive around 9:01 and my dad said they were damn near spot on time wise. He also said the tow truck guy seemed very professional and was impressed.

Sorry to rain on your positive thread and understanding my pov.

It does weigh on me though because the new 4 series are so good looking. Saw a black on black 435 this morning and it was so sexy.

 

My Northern NJ BMW dealer maintained a fleet of 75...yup, that's SEVENTY FIVE loaner cars.

Aside from the amount of capital tied up, the logistics are mind boggling.

I'm just sayin...

 

so BMW issued a recall on their cars, gave you a loaner while they fixed it and your jumping for joy....

am i missing something here ?

 

Al,

Go see Chip or Jim Sabo at BMW of Fairfax, great guys to deal with and I know you have a friendship with Chip already. They have a large stock of BMW's, plus BMW has huge rebates on any 2014 model left, like $8K off on the 530! Search for a 2014 model!