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Originally Posted by Poochie
It's not that people don't want to opt for it but in my experience, twice, the dealership discouraged this option and for some strange reason, downplayed its advantage and benefits.
If someone knows real reason why the franchise dealers are not too keen on pushing this program, please educate me..
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It's actually worse from the dealer standpoint than the suppositions posted here—and a loser for many customers, too, from several perspectives.
First, I have been a BMW owner since 1971. I've been heavily involved with BMW CCA for over 40-years and was the founder of one chapter over 30-years ago. Second, I have been employed by our local BMW dealership off-and-on since the 2002 was a model and not just a year. I have a broad perspective, and I love BMWs.
The last Euro Delivery I did for a customer cost him more than if he'd purchased the car stateside and, due to change of company travel, he never even got to drive his new BMW in Germany. Cost more? Well, the dealer incentives such as rebates and loyalty discounts do not apply to Euro Delivery. The customer can't get them and the dealer doesn't get them. That amounts to a lot more than the pitiful discount built into the program.
Next you guys, the BMW buyers, are shopping for your best deal and won't stop until you find some dealer who knows he won't have to ever see you again and will discount the price to cost or below just to add a unit to their sales total. You know people here working for dealership who have become a Euro Delivery mill offering huge discounts including below cost to make their quotas. So when you come into my dealership wanting to test drive my M3 Competition and asking me questions about how the car should be ordered, knowing the whole time you intend to place your order with a broker of a mega dealership, you are wasting my time—as nicely as I will still treat you.
And the dealer, as stated by others, won't get their AVP money to offset discounts. They also have to give up an allocation of the same model in order to place your Euro Delivery order if it is for any M-car of other hard-to-get model. I give up a car to match your $300-below-cost-deal from some desk-jockey in DC and I loose one car I could sell to a local customer who may really want one. You come to me to test-drive a stick-shift M-model no one in the metropolitan area stocks, knowing full well you're gonna order it from the lowest offer. And I would lose another allocation to sell you a car by matching your deal. But I still let you drive it, didn't I? And I treated you the way a BMW buyer wants to be treated, didn't I? And you know who you are!.
So, if the car can be purchased for less under US delivery or even Performance Center Delivery, why not take a trip to Europe, rent a BMW, drive the 'Ring, and not subject your new car to the threat of damage, or the delay of usually 60-days or more between paying for it and having it at home? Is it the photo op you'll miss? With PCD you get to drive BMW's car at the PC track, not yours. They pay for your hotel room and food for two people, and it costs you nothing. You get all your discounts and your travel time and expense is minimal.
Those are the reasons I see the program for US customers dwindling. That's why the dealers don't promote it. That's why the customer pays more for it, and that's why fewer and fewer opt for it every year. It's similar to those who complain about the demise of small businesses and bemoan the Wal-Marting of America, and yet they'll travel cross town to save 50¢ on toilet paper.
I see regular customers coming into our service department who I sold their first M3 to 25-years ago. But now they're having us service the latest M3 they bought from a faceless dealership 2-hours away where they've never been and wouldn't trust to service their car because our store wasn't willing to lose $500 and an M3 allocation to match their internet pricing. And I still smile and shake their hand.
These days we'll tip our stimulus check for a carry-out meal during a pandemic to help restaurant workers getting more in unemployment than they were earning before the pandemic, but we'll still take hours of a salesperson's time knowing we're not buying a car from them.
Good riddance to the program! If BMW wants to know how to do it right and make everyone happy, they can simply ask me. They tell us regularly how the new generation of BMW buyers are more interested in experiences than relationships. Let me provide a big participation trophy for you. Or maybe a program that helps you get the car you want and the Euro Delivery experience without wasting a salesperson's time and without the lopsided distribution that encourages larger impersonal dealerships to blow out inventory we can't even get enough of.
I sold a Hockenheim Silver M2 Competition manual-transmission off the showroom floor to a disabled vet yesterday. We worked with her for hours to make sure we could do what she wanted us to do in terms of trading a new car she was upside-down in, and getting financing that worked. We stayed 2-hours after closing, but when she and her husband left, we knew they'd be loving their first BMW because we treated them the way we'd want to be treated ourselves. And I've been doing it that same way years before I drove home the first E30 M3 the day it arrived at our dealership.
These days most BMW buyers are getting what they deserve, and that's usually the lowest price with the lowest level of service. And then they complain about the dealers. Days like yesterday make me glad I haven't yet chosen to retire. But that doesn't happen enough to keep me in the business much longer.
All the best to all of you who love your BMWs. I'm headed out to the garage to work on the 1600 Cabriolet my wife and I bought on our honeymoon in Europe almost 40-years ago.