Originally Posted by Satan1974
And so here it starts, looks like I may have a lemon. About a week ago, car reported "low battery" and then "critical battery". Booked it in to the dealer, with a FIVE DAY wait. Error went by itself by the time it was due to go in (no surprise there) on Tuesday this week. They had the car all day, found no errors at all, and gave it back without doing anything (not even a free software upgrade).
Today, my wife goes to pick up the children from school. I get a call whilst I am at work, the car won't start. She has got to the school, got three children in it, and it won't start. A £54,000 2 month old BMW, around 2,500 miles, and it won't start. No errors or anything, electrics are all fine, push the "start" button and the starter motor starts turning, and keeps turning, and keeps turning, but the engine doesn't fire. I have to leave work and drive to the school, in the meantime my wife calls BMW Assist. They report "we'll be there in 90 minutes". NINETY MINUTES!!! So I pick wife + kids up, drop them at home, and drive back to the X5 to wait for BMW assist. They arrive (about 90 minutes after the initial call), spend 15 minutes unplugging the battery and plugging it back in, check the fuses, and then report they can't do anything else. The car is too new and they don't really know how to fix them, and it won't work with the diagnostic equipment they have in the vans yet either. So he calls for a recovery truck. 50 minutes later it arrives, and the X5 gets hoisted up and taken away. I drive home, 3 hours after the initial call to BMW Assist. So, tomorrow it'll be back at the garage. What is the bet it will start first time in the morning and they'll say "it's fine, have it back". Well sod that. I want a full engineers report on exactly what the fault was and what has been done to resolve it. If they can't supply it, off to the lawyer I will go, and back the car will go to BMW for a full refund.
I read so many reports from people on here and E60.Net about recent BMW reliability problems, and I always thought they had just got unlucky. But the frequency of such reports seems to be on the increase.
Sorry but you just don't expect cars of that price to develop faults like this, or if they do, you expect somebody to race over within 20 minutes, chauffeur you home, apologise profusely, give you cash and wine as consolation, and guarantee to fix or replace your car. Well, that's what I think anyway.
Oh, and just before the car went on the tow truck, I thought I'd try starting it one last time. The iDrive lit up like a Christmas tree reporting "4x4 disabled. DSC disabled. Assisted start disabled..." ding ding ding as the errors scrolled along. I took out the key, sobbed a little, and skulked back to the E60, half expecting that not to start either. (As a side note, I have a new E60 ordered for delivery in 6 weeks time. I am wondering if that was a bad idea...)
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