Originally Posted by trader4
I don't understand the timeline, seems there were some missing
weeks in those 60 days of the warranty. But here are some questions
and points:
1 - With the understanding that MB was to do the "required maintenance"
on the car, do you have anything that shows what they said they actually
did? I'm not sure what that even means. For example, if they took the
car on trade, the car shows that the oil was changed about 2K miles ago,
what would they do? What should they have done, etc. Hopefully you
have documentation as to their inspection and maintenance. If they say
they changed the oil/filter, that would be key.
2 - The rotating the tires issue, IMO, is BS. I know BMW doesn't
recommend doing it, but plenty of folks are doing it, without anything
bad happening, let alone the car becoming undrivable in a week
and the front tires being ruined. Did you look at the tires before
you bought the car? After BMW told you they were shot from
being rotated?
3 - With the car losing power and coming up with severe messages like:
idrive says ENGINE MALFUNCTION, AWD MALFUNCTION, DSC MALFUNCTION, BRAKE MALFUNCTION
I wouldn't have waited for it to happen a second time, a week later,
I would have called BMW for an appointment. Especially when you
only had a 60 day warranty and the clock was ticking. That's where
the timeline doesn't add up, because it appears that right after this
the entire 60 days was gone.
4 - "I asked them to check the oil and oil filter, they only checked the oil level and nothing else."
IDK what your expectations of checking the filter were. If you asked
them to do that, I would think the service advisor would have said
that they don't typically check oil filters, only change them.
5 - Do you have the oil filter they say was old/collapsed? What does
MB have to say about that?
6 - I think your best argument here is that BMW misdiagnosed the
problem, including when you returned after driving just a mile
and that by telling you to continue to drive it, they are responsible.
But good luck proving any of that. To start with, it sounds like BMW
doesn't even know what the actual failure is, besides that there is
metal in the oil. It's possible it's something that is clearly unrelated
to the oil filter. Also BMW is obviously BSing you by saying that
codes only have to do with emissions.
Personally, I wouldn't touch a BMW V8 with a ten foot poll. But
if I did, I'd make sure it had at least a one year warranty. Given
the repair history and cost on these, even that $5k for two years
doesn't sound bad, depending on what it covers. I also agree with
what someone else said, which was it would have been a good idea
to get a PPI from someone not connected with the seller. But there
is a good chance even that wouldn't have caught this internal problem.
Besides complaining, escalating within the two dealers, with the
warranty company, etc, your options aren't too good. You can
bluster with an attorney, but to take it to trial, you're going to
have to throw a lot of money into that, with no assurance of being
able to prevail, and they know that.
Where is the car now? I'd have it towed to an authoritative, expert
mechanic for an opinion of what happened. If you have paper that
shows MB says they changed the filter, then before you totally piss
off the BMW dealer, I'd ask them to put their findings about the
collapsed filter, it being old, aftermarket, etc in writing. I wouldn't
be surprised that they won't do it. But if they will, that's important.
Then if you have proof that MB changed the filter, you have BMW experts
saying MB screwed up or lied, which could be your whole case.
You might be able to get some kind of solution where the two
dealers and the warranty company all pony us something to try
to fix this. But.... I doubt it will be easy.
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