BMW: Trying to Move Up The Ladder

In response to Stefan's phone call telling me that he'd be happy to speak with me, but there wasn't anything he could about the lease situation, I decided to try and keep our communications based in emails so that I can keep an accurate record of our interactions.

Below you'll see his email in which he attempted to contact me, again very professional, just useless.  Beyond that you'll see my email back to him.

I sent this on Wednesday, and as of 1pm PST on Friday, October 1, I have heard nothing more about my case.

I'll try and contact him again on Monday.

Thanks for reading.

-----Original Message-----

From: CustomerRelations@bmwusa.com [mailto:CustomerRelations@bmwusa.com]

Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2010 7:13 AM

Subject: BMW contact [1-1620827343]

Dear Mr. Logan:

I have called you at the telephone number you provided to discuss your concern and have been unable to reach you.  If you still require assistance, please call me at 1-800-831-1117, extension 8807.

The BMW Customer Relations and Services Department is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M., Eastern Standard Time.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Stefan Spenthoff

BMW Customer Relations and Services

Representative

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 3:12 PM
To: 'CustomerRelations@bmwusa.com'
Subject: RE: BMW contact [1-1620827343]

Thanks for the call again, Stefan, I'm sorry I've been pretty busy.  I think that calling you is pretty useless since I always get directed to voicemail, so I didn't leave a message this time.

I appreciate that you guys are the manufacturing end, and that lease questions must go through BMW Financial Services - but what I'm trying to get to is the branch of BMW that bridges that gap.  I totally understand that you can only do what you can do - but the reality is that it has been the failure of BMW Manufacturing and their inability to get needed parts in a timely manner that has caused my car to take 4 months to repair - and this is making me an extraordinarily unhappy customer.  As I've said before, this delay is costing me thousands of dollars, and getting the parts to me faster now doesn't make much difference to me anymore.  The time for that was months ago.

The way for BMW to make this right for me, and to keep my business, is for you or your supervisor to direct me to someone that has influence between the two departments so that I might plead my case to them.  Someone in the next step up the corporate ladder that is actually interested in keeping my business and can make the necessary arrangements to release me from my current lease and put me into a new BMW.  That's all I want.  I want to trade in my Z4 for a different BMW.  Seems like this should be simple enough.  If someone can do that, I will be very happy.

If there is no one on your side that has that power, certainly you or your boss must know who that next step is, and how I can get in touch with them.  This is one company, and I'm being told by you that there's nothing you can do, and by BMW Financial that there is nothing they can do - so who CAN do something?

The simple fact is that BMW's inability to get parts timely to their own vendors has cost me 4 months of my life and thousands of dollars.  Someone needs to acknowledge this and do something about it if BMW wants to retain my business.  Otherwise as soon as that car is out of the shop (still no ETA, by the way), I'll put it up on LeaseTraders and never give BMW another penny of my business.

I appreciate the personal nature of your phone calls, but I would prefer to communicate via email as a matter of record as to how BMW has handled this.  I intend to start a blog about this situation and I want to be sure that BMW is represented accurately.

Thank you again for your help, Stefan, I appreciate your perseverance with my case.

Josh