Transmission issues 2004 X5 4.4

[Black5]

Originally Posted by c4racer

I guess that depends on where you live. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but here in the states, when you buy a vehicle that has No Warantee from a dealer they are only obligated to sell a vehicle that passes a safety inspection and will pass any required smog test. Beyond that, there is no warrantee expressed or implied and the buyer is not protected on something that fails the next day, a week later, 2 years later, etc. Of course there is some good-will if a trans went out on the way home from a purchase, but what if the buyer went out and did burn outs and donuts and neutral-drops to the car all day long the day after buying it and the trans failed. Is that the dealers responsibility? Not by law at least not that I am aware of.

Where I come from any car sold by a dealer with registration, requires a certificate of roadworthiness and if less than 10 years old also comes with a compulsory statutory warranty of a minimum of 3 months. (longer periods apply for newer vehicles). The onus would be on the dealer to prove the vehicle was abused, not the other way around.

Again good reason why dealers sell at a premium here.

If buying without warranty, the onus shifts to the new owner to ensure roadworthiness and get registration approved.

Unless you are capable of taking one apart on your kitchen table and fixing it yourself, then don't buy without a warranty, or make sure you keep some money aside for potential (expensive) incidentals.

That's just common sense and should apply to any decent sized expenditure.

[jlanzone]

Originally Posted by amacman

you said 2 times , trade it , pass the problem onto someone else , what misery are you knowingly passing on to an unsuspecting person , have you no conscience .
a lot of people buy these cars using as much funding as is available to them and you suggest crapping on them by knowingly selling a defective car .
a defective car should be sold as a defective car and priced according to condition .
to sell a defective car and not declare the defect is wrong .

I started this thread. My intent was to trade the car into the same local dealership who said there was nothing wrong with my transmission under warranty. If they try to give me less for the car because of the transmission issues, then they would have violated their warranty obligations as the car just went off of CPO warranty. I would only go to another BMW dealer to price shop and since where I live the dealers are about 140 miles apart I will not have much of a chance to do that.

[Quicksilver]

Do your trade negotiations via telephone.
Reduces the miles apart factor to none.

[zumbalak]

The transmission can be an big issue.
I got really lucky, that my transmission issue was fixed at BMW goodwill after the warranty expired.

It was a control module that went bad. The fix would have a cost of 3700 including parts and labor, but glad they got it fixed for free (one year after warranty expired).

They are not fun to deal with. I would have hoped more from BMW in reliability department, especially considering how much these cars are sold for, and what BMW stands for.

Oh well
Live and learn

On the other hand, the electronics and transmission issues are very common for BMW.