[davidvahn]

Hello,

Here is a snapshot of my dealer experience so far. This should be titled. "Here - take my money."

I went through multiple dealers (in all but 1, through the Internet department) before I finally settled on dealer which is going to get my money. Your experience may very.

*Santa Monica BMW*
Very presumptuous. I'd rather you just ask me for my W2 statement and get it out of the way. I'd probably even be ok with that if it meant you started treating a customer who is actively trying to spend 6 figures well.

*Nick Alexander BMW*
Nice enough guy, but 100% clueless about the M5, how to order one, where BMW was in the process. Promised answers but never got back to me.

*South Bay BMW*
Complete waste of time. Arrogant and clueless.

*BMW Encinitas*
This guy had my business and lost it. Ray P. (sales manger) was referred through a mutual friend. He was pretty on the ball for the longest time. Not the quickest with emails, but they came and they were accurate and concise. He was very knowledge about the //M line overall.

Then the M5 Order Bank opened up and he didn't respond to any of my mails.

It's sort of a shame, really. The guy earned and had my business but didn't want it. *shrug*

*Steve Thomas*
I have 1 week of experience with them and I gave them $5 deposit. Here is how it went.

One very heavy M5 message board poster promotes Steve Thomas like he is Steve Thomas himself. I'm skeptical of this kind of thing, but after my frustration not getting return contact from the Encinitas dealer I emailed them and thus began a relationship with Ryan A.

He emailed me back within minutes early on a Saturday or Sunday morning a week ago and said, "Call me." So I did. We chatted briefly. I told him what I was wanted and emailed him some details. I asked him to contact me as soon as I could place an order.

1/2 through the week, we had a brief hiccup that almost ended our affair.

I think Ryan was testing me when he called me mid-week to say that "Steve Thomas family had not decided if they are going to sell the car at MSRP or $5k over." I simply said, "I could probably do that."

And, I could, but probably would not.

Later that week, Ryan emailed again to say, "We had a meeting and have agreed to sell the car at MSRP."

I am happy enough with the experience that I gave them $5k deposit yesterday. I'm 100% sure that if I had met Ryan before I went through all the drama with the other dealers, it might not be going so well. That experience taught me a lot and made it easier to be concise with Ryan what I wanted to do about the M5.

David