[AchtungF80]

Well originally I had my car ordered here as they were the first place willing to take my money and agree on my pricing, and at first I couldn't be happier. I had a signed sales document and nothing more than trust that I had a car on order. I was so excited, I took my wife over the next day after signing the deal to come look at the car, and they were really nice enough to bring the car from an identical color car from the storage lot to the main dealer area for us to sit in.

Then as I became of affluent on bimmerfest.com and here, and reading accounts of people like me placing orders well in advance of delivery (late August), and either getting production numbers right away or soon after, I was curious as to why I didn't have one.

My CA at DiFeo told that I had a signed sales order and not to worry. Originally the thought was they would keep my order and around May or June place it. My whole thinking behind placing a deposit this early was in order for me to free up some cash selling my 2003 Nissan 350Z. The nearly 5 month wait would be sufficient time to do so. Finally my CA, after several calls in to her told me should would FAX the order in and it would take a few days to receive confirmation, but a production # would not be given, since it was too early.


Now, the same night I had signed this deal, I got an e-mail from Ricki Shamen (one of the bimmerfest sponsors) and a fellow CA at DiFeo, because apparently I had e-mailed her inquiring about the purchase before I met my CA I had an appt with. Her e-mail basically said they were NOT doing ED and all 135i's would be coming from incoming allocation. She advised me that I should talk to the sales manager who completed this deal, provided me his name and speak to him to clarify.

The day after we sat in the car, I decided to call my CA's sales manager to inquire about this e-mail. He told me there should not be a problem and took my phone number and promised to call me back. He never did.

The following Saturday, i decided to go in and speak to my CA in person, with Ricki Shamen's e-mail in hand and asked what was the meaning of it. She told me not to worry and only deal with her and that the order would be honored. I asked her what's NOT to stop them from giving me a deposit back should it be later realized they made a mistake. She assured me this would go against me giving a future recommendation for her (duh) and would give her dealer a bad name, so why would they do that. I left still a little uneasy.

I was OK for a few more weeks but still realizing I was not accepting her word, I decided to call her again. She was out. I then thought maybe I could call BMWNA or Customer Relations as maybe they could explain the ordering process to me or maybe even confirm the order was indeed in the system and she just didnt know she could give out a production number. Neither could find out for me and offered to call the dealer on my behalf. I asked them to do so and they spoke my CA's sales manager. He gave the same reply, "nothing to worry about, I'll research it further, let me take down him number." Again, 24 hours I didn't hear from him.

This week was the last straw. I realized, I'm more stressed out in the ordering process and not getting a great initial feeling with this dealer. After speaking with Adrian's BMW on here and him explaining how my order was being handled and there was NO real allocation attached to it, I decided to call my brother's BMW dealer he dealt with when he bought his 545i. He told me in the past his CA was a stand up guy and was very customer oriented. If anything, his CA would give me the info I needed straight up without trying to sell me, a REAL CLIENT ADVISOR.

He told me he had a May allocation ready to go out and a prod# to give me if I wanted to place the order. He also told me a little about ED and where my temp tags would NOT be honored. Right off the bat, I had a good feeling about this. He needed me to fax/scan my DL, SS# and passport over to him to submit the order. This is already a few steps above the Difeo CA.

Later that day, I just called to confirm if he needed me to come in to sign a sales order and he said no, it'll take a few days to get the order updated in the system but he now has a production # for me. He said he may need me to come in next week when he receives verification from BMW that the order was accepted and all my options were updated, then he could charge my CC :eyebulge:

At this point, I knew this was it and e-mailed my last CA and cancelled my order. Her reply was amusing, "I'd be happy to cancel your order, good luck!"

In the end, I should have listened to many on the BMW boards about what was a good dealer and which were not. It was my impatience that I didn't wait for my now new CA to be back from vacation and to put money down at DiFeo in haste.