Well, with the care I had given to the M3, I did not want a blue book whole sale check from my own insurance company, since the car could have been sold prior to damange for pretty good retail value.

The solution I offered would have cost these guys the least amount of $$, and they would have retained me as a customer.

Regardless, after that incident, it makes me take a whole other look at the service department. Basically, your service buddy will do what he can to hook you up. But the owner can at any time override his decision and tell you to go f yourself.

But I lease my cars now, so if stuff like this were to happen again, I can simply walk away and be done.

My GT2 turned over 20K miles just the other day, less than a year after I got it with 8K on the clock.

 

i dont understand the question.
if a dealer did that to my car, i sure as hell will not involve my insurance. it's not my problem. the dealer f'd up. they, if they plan to do any business in the future, would pay up. if i was partner in the dealership. i not only will stand up. i will give stuka a brand new M3 of his choosing. or M5 or M6 for that matter to please him. that will make the ugly episode into one of the most powerful and positive advertising campaign that i otherwise cannnot by for $100k.

look at how odwalla juice resolved the problem they had. i heard only good things about odwalla, no one blamed them for bad juice b/c they stood up and fixed the problem, no finger pointing. their business was not affected much if at all by otherwise a very negative episode.

unless there's other inside issues i dont know about, but if the dealer took car out for a test drive/joy ride whatever, if it happened under their watch, the bill is on them. they have insurance too. use it. i as owner, will not use my insurance.

 

Well, they chose to run the business that way, and that is certainly the owner's right.

The post I made was read over by my lawyer, basically describing what happened.

I to this day can't figure out why the owner wouldn't just take my initial offer, it was pretty reasonable. Anyway, this is why even though I have a pretty good relationship with my service guy, I know that ultimately, he doesn't have a say in what happens if the owner doesn't want it happening.

 

stuka, i have no prob with what you suggested.
i, too, cannot understand why the owner chose to do his business that way. and savage doesn't have a big reputation in LA, and they are a fairly insignifcant dealer in the bimmer world. now if cunningham, century, and some of the big bimmer dealers want to pull something like that i can see that they dont give a f... but not savage.

 

If the Stuka wanted more than blue book because of the care of his car and the dealer didn't want to go there, technically he could have used his insurance AND if his insurance co. found that, yes, it was worth what Stuka was saying, they could have paid off Stuka and gone after Savage through third party subrogation, with no black mark on his insurance.

Off topic, Cunningham is a fantastic dealership. The late Rug Cunningham never sold a car over MSRP, even the very hot and hard to get models. A true racer and an honest, family run dealership. If you put a deposit down, there was no monkey business.

 

pete, you are right. i know cunningham shop well.
i did not imply they cheat or whatever, i was trying to say that they are a very powerful and respected dealer, and IF they wanted to screw you (not that they ever would), i can conceivably see that they have some leverage, but savage's reputation really isn't that good in the SoCal area. i bought 2 bimmers from them in late 80's. one of them e30m3 and we were never happy with them and so are many of our bimmerhead friends.

 

That's why you need to become buddies with the owner. Too bad the only dealership owner that I know and who races owns a Volvo dealership.
BTW don't buy demo cars at his Volvo dealership (I won't say where). I know where they have been

 

I recently had a dead battery and was denied for warranty because my '04 GT3 (bought in April '05 & only 2,xxx miles ) is a garage queen. Ironically, it's always hooked up to the battery maintenance thing until the week before it died. And that last week I drove the car almost everyday

As far as relationship with the dealer, I already had 2 annual oil change with that same dealership plus I had them flush the brake fluid during that last visit. Plus a couple minor warranty fixes. So I thought the dealer knew this "was" supposed to be a long lasting relationship.

The service advisor told me the battery is not under warranty because I do not drive it enough, I must drive the vehicle 15-20 miles/day or 5-6k miles/year On top of all, when i got home, I noticed a small mark on one of the fender which turns out to be someone spilled a drop of acid and it ate thru the paint Needless to say, that's the end of that relationship!

 

I had a similar circumstance with a Volvo dealer several years ago, that is, battery acid eating through the paint. It took a lot of work to get them to own up to it, but they finally painted the fender.

 

Yeah, it's one of those thing i know the dealer will not admit and even if they do, i don't know if it's worth repainting the fender for that little dot. Yes that dot bothers me a lot but who knows how the repainting will turn out...

Anyways, i ended up using a little touch up paint, wet sand, rubbing compound, then polish it. Still visible especially to me but guess i will have to live with it

 

Did you use this stuff http://www.langka.com/ ? I've used it for years with GREAT result.

 

Yikes, wish i knew this stuff before, the result may have been better