intoflatlines
Drag Race Newbie
OK, I'll try to make a long story short here:
My GF's grandmother recently gifted her an E30 BMW. It was pretty much sitting in a garage for the last 25 years (the car has a total of less than 3,000 miles on it), however, 8 years ago the house attached to the garage caught fire and the car sustained smoke damage and was supposedly stripped down and restored, which cost around $12K at the time.
Fast forward 8 years to earlier this month, and the car was towed from a garage to a BMW dealership. I tried to suggest having all the work done by a local indie BMW E30 shop, but the grandmother insisted on taking it to the BMW dealership since "they know best"
. Apparently the grandmother gave the dealership instructions to do a thorough examination of the car and make sure that every single thing that needed to be replaced/serviced was taken care of (money was not an issue). On top of that, she mentioned a few things that she thought would have to be looked at/replaced.
We get the car back and look at the invoice by BMW for ~$4K. Breaking it down, the only service they did was on parts that the grandmother had mentioned. Every line says "customer requested...". Which to me, means that they did not diagnose/examine anything as instructed, and instead just went down the laundry list of things the grandmother requested. They did not change any fluids or filters, did not want to change the timing belt since "it looked fine" (BMW recommends 4 yr intervals), did not change any other belts or anything. Pretty much they charged $4K for:
- new brake pads/rotors (likely not necessary, as the car was sitting covered in a dry garage, and I physically examined the brakes before being sent to the dealership)
- new rear window
- new tail light (which they did not fix the electrical problem that was the cause of the grandmother mentioning the tail light)
- new timing belt
- new gas shock for trunk
- new instrument cluster (RPMs and fuel gauges were not working when initially returned to the grandmother, she had to tell them to fix it before she took it back)
All of the above things were requested by the grandmother, not a single thing did they recommend themselves. There were other issues that they did not find/resolve such as broken auxilary fan resistor, tail light electrical problems..
To top it off, I noticed a huge rodent nest in the cowl/vent directly under the windshield on the outside of the vehicle. I didn't even need to open anything up to find it, I was able to see the nest just by standing next to the car. And it's not even like there wasn't any evidence of the nest, the inside of the car, especially when you turned on the ventilation, reeked of urine.
So, my question is: Do I have any right to be pissed off at the BMW dealership, and if so, what is the best course of action to make my dissatisfaction known?
My GF's grandmother recently gifted her an E30 BMW. It was pretty much sitting in a garage for the last 25 years (the car has a total of less than 3,000 miles on it), however, 8 years ago the house attached to the garage caught fire and the car sustained smoke damage and was supposedly stripped down and restored, which cost around $12K at the time.
Fast forward 8 years to earlier this month, and the car was towed from a garage to a BMW dealership. I tried to suggest having all the work done by a local indie BMW E30 shop, but the grandmother insisted on taking it to the BMW dealership since "they know best"
. Apparently the grandmother gave the dealership instructions to do a thorough examination of the car and make sure that every single thing that needed to be replaced/serviced was taken care of (money was not an issue). On top of that, she mentioned a few things that she thought would have to be looked at/replaced. We get the car back and look at the invoice by BMW for ~$4K. Breaking it down, the only service they did was on parts that the grandmother had mentioned. Every line says "customer requested...". Which to me, means that they did not diagnose/examine anything as instructed, and instead just went down the laundry list of things the grandmother requested. They did not change any fluids or filters, did not want to change the timing belt since "it looked fine" (BMW recommends 4 yr intervals), did not change any other belts or anything. Pretty much they charged $4K for:
- new brake pads/rotors (likely not necessary, as the car was sitting covered in a dry garage, and I physically examined the brakes before being sent to the dealership)
- new rear window
- new tail light (which they did not fix the electrical problem that was the cause of the grandmother mentioning the tail light)
- new timing belt
- new gas shock for trunk
- new instrument cluster (RPMs and fuel gauges were not working when initially returned to the grandmother, she had to tell them to fix it before she took it back)
All of the above things were requested by the grandmother, not a single thing did they recommend themselves. There were other issues that they did not find/resolve such as broken auxilary fan resistor, tail light electrical problems..
To top it off, I noticed a huge rodent nest in the cowl/vent directly under the windshield on the outside of the vehicle. I didn't even need to open anything up to find it, I was able to see the nest just by standing next to the car. And it's not even like there wasn't any evidence of the nest, the inside of the car, especially when you turned on the ventilation, reeked of urine.
So, my question is: Do I have any right to be pissed off at the BMW dealership, and if so, what is the best course of action to make my dissatisfaction known?
