Dealer's gouging?

[chunpng]

I live in the San Francisco Peneinsula Area and got my car from a dealer in LA. In April 2001, no one here will sell an M5 for less than $90,000. I was lucky and found a Titanium Silver one there for $67,000 (very long story). No debate, got the car from LA.

Now I want to deactivate the door auto lock, and reset the memory for seat/mirror/steering wheel positions, THE LOCAL DEALERS WANT $120 TO DO THE JOB!!

Is this a rip off? Can anyone suggest a local dealer that would do it as a courtesy? If you have a name of a person to talk to, that may work a lot better still.

BTW, as of 10-18-2001, Autotraders show Bay Area BMW dealers asking $75,000 to $90,000 for 00 M5s. May be someone is still willing to pay through the nose around here.

Thanks.

CP

[DarkStar]

CP, I feel your pain. That is part of the reason why I "bent over" and bought local, but at a premium. I don't get any questions asked when I request a loaner, and my dealer is pretty good, I say pretty good, about working through issues with me.

My suggestion: bring the car in for something else: i.e. oil change, recall work, etc., and ask the service advisor to perform the changes while the car is in. If they see that you want to be a service customer, they may be more inclined to work with you. The problem here is the inconsistencies with the service writers; it is best to deal with the manager if you can.

Allison has a new Service Manager, his name is Mick. He's been pretty fair with me so you may want to give him a try with your needs.

Good luck,

-Alex

[beewang]

CP,
My Pal Jon Shafer (GSM) at Santa Barbara, CA told me he'd do it for free. If you ever drive southward, you should plan to stop by there. It's quick and he'd do it for free.

Are you getting ripped off?? why yes!! what is a fair price?? IMO $60 Tops, $35 is fair. What would I pay?? I'd pay w/ a couple brewski and take Jonny boy out after work.



beewang

2002 LeMans M5 "Blue Lightning"

[nt]

Allison in Mountain View did mine for 1 hour labour ($60 I think). They'll do it for free once for the original owner, but after that they'll charge you (I bought mine used outside of CA). If it was never done on delivery in LA you might persuade them to comp you.

To my mind they shouldn't charge you for this sort of thing even then -- after all it's an opportunity to get you into the place and sell you accessories, a new car, etc..

I assume this is also why they don't let you select your own darned options through the OBC -- it's hardly rocket science.

Saying that, they messed it up the first few times and I eventually had to stand next to the guy at the machine and tell him which options to select!

BTW you got a great price if that was a new '01 back in April.

Nick.

[TKT]

Programming car/key memory is fairly simple and at the most will take a tech probably 30 minutes max (for key duplication). I guess if the dealer labor rate is 240.00/hr then that would be fair!!

Hmm dealer doing this as a courtesy for you? Of course if you purchased the vehicle from them. You have to realize that the process does take time. BMW does not have a labor operation to pay technicians to program car key memory. This may not matter much to you as an owner, but look at it from the technician point of view. Should he do his service advisor a favor and knock out a freebie car/key memory in 30 minutes, or do a rotate & balance and drive belt change that could both be done in the same amount of time and pay 2 hours labor? I guess it all depends on the technician, cause there's no way in hell a service advisor is going to be able to program it for you. If it was me, yeah, I'd knock it out for you. I'm a nice guy, plus it may help me to get better service tickets from my advisor in the future (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours). Sorry to ramble, but I thought I'd give you an insight on how things work. I do alot of freebies, but in the long run it helps me out.