Dealer complaints are rampant on car forums. It is true of all I have been on and it seems especially true here.

Stealers? Nobody is talking about the football team.

In light of all these complaints it would be nice to find a way to work better with the dealers, rather then search locally for a INDY or good price from a BMW dealer when we are desperate to get a fix to our vehicles.

I would like to propose that we set up a table or database in a thread that shows as much information about dealers as possible. Their name, address, SA names etc.

In addition, I think that when a member buys any part or service, that part name, part number, and dealer price should be listed in a table so that the next time another member needs the same part, they can compare the prices between their local dealer and the listed dealers prices.

If a distant dealer has the same part for significantly less, you can always buy from that dealer using the mail. For example… Years ago, I needed a tail lamp lens for a car. The local dealer wanted ~$300 dollars for the part, another dealer wanted $280, but I also found a dealer far away that only wanted $175. I purchased the part from the latter dealer and he threw in the shipping for free.

Once we establish who is selling what parts for what price we can pressure others to sell to us at a slightly better price – or they don’t get much of our business.

This works on other forums. For example, the RX7 community uses a particular dealer in Virginia. His prices are far better for most parts. His price to me for an engine was so good that even though he charged $350 to ship it, I still came out a couple hundred better than if I would have bought the engine from the dealer 3 miles from my house. He is so popular in the community that every spring and fall he has sales where he lists most of the parts he has laying around, or parts he can get in mass quantities at tremendous discounts.

Seems to me the X5 community is pretty big, and we should not have to pay incredibly inflated prices for parts when we can use our buying power instead.

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2006 X5 Sport 4.4i