The inquiry replies are prompt and VIP status till you sign on. Once you sign on, no answers and the standard answer is "We will call you when we get a build notice" till suddenly you get the build notice and you need to sign that. I gave up calling. Look at my previous post. It was the most frustrating thing that happened in my life. At a minimum BMW should give you an order number that allows you to know you are indeed in the queue. [...]
I wish the inquiry replies were prompt!
My closest dealer has been fine.
Otherwise, the staff fielding on-line submissions and emails have only about a 50% success rate in promptly telling me whether a vehicle in an on-line listing is available for purchase. (I totally understand that all build orders are automatically listed on a dealer website, with no way of noting that it's actually not available. But how hard is it for a dealership to maintain even just an internal Google Sheet so any staff can quickly tell a customer, no, sorry, not available? Well, okay, the answer is, apparently far too hard for many dealers.)
For build order inquiries, those have mainly been ignored entirely.
As for Tulley BWM of Nashua NH, which told me:
"If you were to place a custom order for one we would take a $3,000 non refundable deposit and we would expect you to take delivery in Q2 of this year so April, May or June."
... eventually, after some information from me (happy to do your job for you!), and the information from them that I would be #18 on their M50 allocation wait list, eventually they agreed with me that:
"Right, so taking delivery not in Q2 2023 but instead Q4 best case scenario. And possibly Q2 2024."
As for BWM of Norwood MA, which told me:
"Currently there is a 6-9 month delivery time, does this work for you?"
... the BDC Manager kept insisting that only six orders were ahead of me and they all had assigned production dates.
After she would not answer my question of whether that meant I would be first in line for the next allocation, I forwarded the email exchange to the sale manager, who wrote that actually those six customers were all of course waiting for allocations.
But in way that's good, because they're showing their incompetence ahead of time.
Ditto for my third round since last year with Herb Chambers (mainly to see if their incompetence is consistent, and indeed it is).
As for dealer responsiveness once a deposit is placed but before an allocation is received, I'm not sure what updates are possible, given how BMW keeps its dealers in the dark on anticipated allocations.
I suppose a dealer could send out updates on where you stand on the dealer's updated wait list, and when the most recent allocations were received for people ahead of you?
