Quote:
Originally Posted by jotty
We'll update on my problems,and I must stress that I don't question anyone else's advice on here so please don't take offence it my own experience.
As said the car had 3 cracked wheels, 2 rear 1 front. The dealer said I would have to pay for all three which was over £1500. I wasn't going to even consider this, so my task began following advice from this great site.
I rang BMW customer service, spoke to a lad who tried his best to fob me off and saying that as my dealer had found excessive wear to the inner edge of the tyres he couldn't help.
I went back to dealer and pointed out the wear was because of the wheels, and they came back with an offer to pay 50% -£800.
Rang BMW CS back and spoke to the same lad who tried to convince me to take the offer as the tyres had been the cause (yeh right!), so I firmly asked to speak to his supervisor. A young lady came on and said exactly the same thing. I demanded they speak to the service manager at my dealer as something wasn't right. They tried to say my car was to far out of warranty, I reminded them they had replaced the rear wheels 18 months ago so they where younger than the car. The girl even tried to question my service history as a reason.
By now I was about to explode, rang trading standards and the gov consumer advice line,to describe these as friggin useless is an understatement, the ca woman was more interested in the cars finance than the problem. My advice is don't bother with these clowns.
BMW CS rang back and said they had emailed the dealer and as far as they were concerned case closed. So again my advice is don't bother with these useless, pointless wasters unless you are in need of an address for your local sushi bar via the connect thingy.
So went back to dealer ready for a row, to my utter amazement the service manager was waiting for me. A pleasant chat about what he thought of the CS dept which wasn't much. As I was a decent previous customer he offered to intervene and get back to me, today he rang and said that that BMW had agreed to let me pay £360 (not sure how they worked that out) and that he would pay the £160 so I have 3 wheels for £200.
Now some will say I should have held out for nil, but I was getting nowhere and my 5 year old car was on a ramp waiting. So my experience is that they will no longer just replace unless in warranty, BMW CS and consumer advice are totally useless and that at the end of the day finding the right person to speak to is the only way.
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Same on this side of the pond ... my case was 2 rear wheels on my brand new Z4 Sdrive 35i in 2011 what a fiasco on a long planned retirement road trip.
While on a US road trip during the summer of 2010 with my then new Z4 35i I experienced a flat on my rear driver site wheel. The flat was due to a crack on my wheel. I was told by this dealership: The US and Canadian Warranty are not the same (this turned out later not to be true) and I only have two options open to me, 1) Be towed to the nearest Canadian dealership by road side assistance or 2) Order a new wheel and have them ship the old one to Canada for warranty claims.
I opted to order a new wheel. Once the dealership received the new wheel (BMW Style 296) they said, sorry we don't change wheels this is done at the tire shop. So I followed the Parts Manager to the tire shop. He introduced me and then promptly left. The shop people there went to work on my old wheel using tire irons and actually damaged my wheel (BMW Canada later declared the wheel bend). While in this tire shop I asked all other wheels to be checked for cracks, this was done and the passenger rear wheel was also found having 2 hairline cracks. I decided to drive home very carefully (3000 KM) with the two hairline cracks.
All this dealership did for me is a) put air in my tires. b) order a new wheel. and c) gave me wrong information about the BMW warranty.
If you live near this dealership avoid it like the plague (I posted this originally here --->
Post No 26 on Page 2
The final "
Resting Place" of the wheel that I had to drag all the way home in my then 2 seater now a
$700- Garden Hose Holder can be seen below, keeping my winter cover company.
Edit ... added the wheel and the final resting placed ... Shame BMW