Experience same once with my X5 but when it engaged almost after a second and half it kinda "jumped", the following day it never did, thats almost a week now just crossed my fingers, I had similar issue with Lexus (Automatic) - it was 'delaying' into reverse after 3 days it just couldnt go into reverse!.

After assessment it was noticed that trans oil was too little and affected clutch! Thats why I said I crossed my fingers with my X - these machines can really make one pay thru the nose!

if your parked on a hill you better make sure your ebrake is engaged before you put your x into park. so many people neglect this e brake and when they have no reverse this could be the culprit.

What is "eBrake"! Damn did my dog eat my homework!

Everytime your about to park, put your x in nuetral. If your x starts rolling your probably on an incline. Keep the x in nuetral with your foot on the brake. Pull up your emergency brake lever then take your foot off the brake. This will transfer the weight of the x to the rear drum brake instead of this little piece of metal in your transmission which in the longrun could snap. This might not be every tranny problem but it is preventative maintenance.

eBrake = Emergency Brake = Hand Brake

That was my point, that you can't necessarily trust things that you just read on the internet. The Atlanta site contradicted itself in the opening paragraphs (my emphasis in red):

The fact that they are presenting themselves as experts, and then listing vehicles that don't even use the transmission they are discussing, is a warning sign. It may be a little harsh, but sometimes independent = in-dumb-pendent.

I don't agree that this is preventative maintenance. Preventative maintenance would be replacing it before it broke. You are just proposing not using it as it was designed.

Applying the park brake first may feel good, and doesn't hurt, especially on a steep hill, but the parking pawl (the little piece of metal that holds the vehicle on an incline) is designed to do just that, for the life of the vehicle. It won't break in normal use. It will potentially break if you let the vehicle start rolling forward or back and then put it into park, effectively shock loading it.

I have seen drivers rely on a parking brake instead of the parking pawl, because they are trying to 'save it'. Some of them have forgotten to put the vehicle in park at all, and when the vehicle rolled away we got to go out with the tow truck and recover the vehicle. In those cases it would have been better if they just used park, as the vehicle was designed for.

Try resetting the trans by doing the gas pedal trick, otherwise I'd say you start driving it more to make it fail sooner if it's in fact going out. Got a trailer you can tow for the hell of it?

i did the trans reset that was in one of the threads here, it inovled holding the gas pedal and i forget what else, i have it written down somewhere. it did not work. Sadly i dont have a trailer, nor do i have a tow hitch on my car so i'm not sure how that would work. I'm currently in the process of talking to a couple dealerships to see what we can work out. before my family went on a selling spree, we serviced 6 BMWs at the same time with these dealerships (5 of them NOT under warranty) and spent thousands with them. and yet they still treat this problem like dirt. What ever happened to customer loyalty? :(

Loyalty costs money on the dealerships, so unless they're going to make money on it (aka your wallet, not warranty), then you've gotta find the needle in the haystack.