ED Experience - The Good and Bad [long]

The good news is that I picked up my 330 today! The bad news is that I was supposed to be on June 10th. :-(

When I arrived early on Friday, June 10th I was told by the ED folks. “We have all your paperwork and everything looks in order, but…. Um…. Your car isn’t here…” Well I wasn’t too pleased since the whole point of the vacation was to drive my car around Europe! Since it was going to take a couple of days to sort things out they gave me an X3 to use. (Someone awhile back posted a similar experience to mine and I think they gave him the same X3.)

So I take delivery of my slightly used, automatic X3 and head off to Italy for a week. BTW, the whole vacation has been a blast! At the end of the day on Monday I got a call from ED saying that they found my car and it’s ready. I said that I would be back in Munch on June 20th (today) and can pick it up then. Too bad I have to drop it off on tomorrow. At least I got to put a couple of miles on it while on vacation.

Things I learned…

- Don’t do pickups on a Friday. If there are any problems it won’t get sorted out until the following Monday.
- Don’t have an 8 hour drive scheduled for the same day as delivery. Stay in the Munich area for a couple of days in case there is a problem with delivery.
- An X3 is a very nice car to have on vacation. I was surprised how well it drove.
- An X3 only gets 19 mpg average
- An X3 can do 135mph.
- The factory tour in Munich is awesome! It is a must see.
- No one has ever seen a red E90 330i.

I attached some pics. One crossing the alps, one showing the tight road from Bellagio to Lecco Italy ( I didn't find it that bad), and some of the new car.

Reply » ED Experience - The Good and Bad [long]

Thanks for the write-up and experience. For what it's worth, you handled your situation in exemplary fashion, compared to the other post which was whiny and he only had a malfunctioning nav, compared to your missing car. Well done man!

In your scenario of not picking up on Friday, you would actually have to schedule three days in Munich, just to insure you could get things worked out in the mostly rare case of problems. Since it took them the full next business day to locate your car. Even if you picked up on Monday, you would not have heard from them until Tuesday late, thus the pickup on Wednesday. IE: schedule two extra days for pickup. So, I don't think there is any planning for unforseen circumstances. Just make a mental note that things may come up and you may need to be flexible.

Congrats again, man you handled it well. I salute you!

PS: That first picture looks like a COOL road, and your car looks awesome!

Reply » ED Experience - The Good and Bad [long]

Yeah, it's not good to dwell on the bad things. I prefer to look a the good things like not putting 1800 miles on my own car, not caring where I parked it :-), getting to drive on some cool dirt roads in Italy, etc.

The cool road is the road to the Splügenpass on the Switzerland-Italy border. It's much less traveled than the San Bernardino Pass. Here's a better pic of the winding road.

Reply » ED Experience - The Good and Bad [long]

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Yeah, too bad you didn't get to drive your "own" car, but the alternative wasn't half bad, and does have its advantages.

I think your advice about Munich is pretty good, but might be a bit extreme. I agree that you shouldn't plan to leave for an 8 hour drive on the day of pick up, but getting out of town the day you pick up isn't such a bad idea. All things considered, I think you're better off not getting the car until your last full day in Munich, so you don't have to park it . If you're really worried, call the delivery center on your arrival and check in to make sure the car is there.

Reply » ED Experience - The Good and Bad [long]

Excellent! You made the most of it!!

Really good to hear.

That road is just amazing looking... I've marked it on my map for a possible route on my next ED!! And made a mental note to keep a good attitude like you did, in case of unexpected situations. Good to see the ED department was ready to pitch in quickly. I bet they were embarrased!

Reply » ED Experience - The Good and Bad [long]

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Actually it wasn't just a bad nav...it was a bad car control computer which runs the whole i-Drive system. The first symptom was the nav not working but the engineer from Siemens that built the system and took a look at it said all sorts of things would likely stop working down the road. That plus the 9 hour of being told it really wasn't important and the car would keep running without the computer might have left me a bit "whiny."

Not to mention the nav was sort of a requirement to find the spot I had picked out to propose to my girlfriend. That made it a little important to me on its own merit.

That X3 does drive amazingly nice though. It had me wishing I had gotten the park-distance sensors on my E90. I spent some time talking to a BMW engineer from South Carolina during the factory tour in Munich (coincidentally we grew up a few miles from each other). He said the next design of the X3 is going to be really impressive and even have real painted bumpers instead of grey plastic ones. Apparently the plastic bumpers have really hurt the sales of the X3 in Europe. It was so much fun as a loaner I'm really thinking about buying one in a few years.

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