The saga of Ken Tanisaka and BMW of Lincoln, Nebraska is almost over, as the embattled eBay winner of a nicely-priced BMW M3 sedan has exchanged funds with the dealership and the car is set to be shipped for delivery. It's been a long road for Ken involving lawyers and lots of patience as the dealership, part of the Husker Auto Group, stubbornly fought not to honor its eBay auction that Ken won for $10,000 below MSRP. Now that it's almost over, BMW of Lincoln should be glad that the firestorm of negative media attention with which it's had to deal is about to end. That's what you would think, but this particular dealership seems to relish in making the wrong choices. Autoblog reader Dale pointed us to this advert that was emailed to him from the Husker Auto Group, which paints the whole ordeal as a case of the dealership bending over backwards to make a customer happy. Read the most choice paragraph below.
Being the honorable dealership that Husker is, [it] agreed to honor the price of $60,000 for the BMW E90 M3. This vehicle typically would have been priced around $70,000. At Husker BMW, we honor all contracts. And in this case we covered the $10,000 for the vehicle to make our customer happy.
True, the Husker Auto Group eventually honored the auction that Ken rightfully won, but we'd hardly describe its behavior as honorable. The decision to let go of the car for $10k below sticker appears motivated less by the desire to make Ken happy than to get out from under the harsh spotlight of attention that was aimed at the dealership by a loosely organized but large group of compassionate internet citizens. The last thing this dealership should be doing is bragging about its customer service.
[Source: imakenews.com]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Mr X @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:06PM
Unreal....
Reality_check @ Apr 3rd 2008 3:30PM
Sounds like that tobacco company who donated $5 millions for Katrina survivors, and then spent $20 millions advertising that they ´ve done such thing.
Mr. Oak @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:06PM
Congrats!! to Ken. A bit of wisdom though, do not have these folks service your M3.
rndmnme @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:14PM
...and being a BMW... it will be in for service...
(sorry, I had to)
Enjoy the Bimmer, Ken.
Seminole @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:53PM
Ken lives in California, so I doubt he'll be going to Nebraska to get it serviced.
John R @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:09PM
wow, these people don't know when to quit.
Bob @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:09PM
Congratulations to Ken! And good luck to the Husker Auto Group marketing team. You're going to need to tap dance a lot faster than that to keep ahead of this one.
iSpec @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:11PM
Business is business. As someone who has worked in this industry, let me assure you that dealerships and manufacturers are completely motivated by profit, which is free enterprise, and not into providing discount transportation to the public.
Many people don't understand that making money is what business is all about. They don't want to be your friend unless your forking it over. Period!
RJ @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:19PM
Which is EXACTLY the reason you don't treat customers like that and go around spewing your bad reputation. I know that I won't buy a car from them even if they're the LAST BMW dealer in the world.
Business practices like that dealer has brought down some mightly enterprises in the past.
If a businessman can't differentiate short term, shady profit, to long term, stable profit, then he shouldn't be in business. In the end, this dealer gets the darwin award - for earning huge global media negativity over $10k.
Bob @ Apr 3rd 2008 6:00PM
I agree with you iSpec. I am in the oil and gas business and we too are all about profits, not about providing discount gasoline to everyone. Sadly for us, Americans feel entitled to all the cheap gas they want and think anyone who stands in the way is stealing from them. And if anyone says anything about windfall profits, I urge you to Google "profit margin" before you say anything.
cory @ Apr 4th 2008 11:51AM
I love this quote, "At Husker BMW, we honor all contracts. "
That is not true.. ive been in a pending law suit with Husker Auto Group / Bmw of Lincoln for 2 years now.. They are not honoring that contract... What crap.
Fil (the general manager) told me to my face the friday before this whole ebay car thing, that he was going to drop the law suit against me because he doesnt like to sue his customers. Well after i called Huskers lawyer to let him know what Fil said, Fil today told me to fly a kite.
Car salesmen's word means NOTHING.. in my opinion.
I about to launch my own website about my 2 years $7000 in legal fee ordeal with Husker Auto Group and lets see how their Marketing department "spins" it..
RJ @ Apr 3rd 2008 9:46PM
Bob, why do you think many large corporations have charity funds or something similar? Does donations not eat into their margin of profit?
Because in return, they get POSITIVE media attention, which is the best advertising you can have. People will be more willing to do business with you on good actions alone. Only caring about your immediate profit is short sighted = business failure.
Wouldn't that dealer have MUCH better profit by loosing $10k, but gaining the respect of much more potential buyers?
judd @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:28PM
I guess you've not been watching the news lately.
bobby @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:26PM
Ridiculous.
People should start a new flame war to all the email addresses of the dealership to express the absurdity of this an duping new unsuspecting customers about the real situation behind this.
Should've just taken the $10k loss and made it up elsewhere on someone else who wants to give 10k away. No one would have been the wiser.
CarbonBlack @ Apr 3rd 2008 2:10PM
I agree,
Ive called them twice, emailed them 4 times
and just for the arrogance, they seem to need more encouragement
judd @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:29PM
Hey, they took away the post I replied too.
Seoultrain @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:30PM
While it's pretty funny that they're trying to act all high and mighty after the fact, if it were my dealership and my $10k, I probably would have done the same thing.
As a side note, do people buy BMW's in nebraska?
rsk135 @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:36PM
Not any more.
tankd0g @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:43PM
I still can't believe he sold the deal to a leasing company.
If oyu are looking for a new M3 from them, you'd be stupid not to ask for the same $10,000 discount they gave the last guy. Or do they only bend over backwards for customers they don't like?
Luis @ Apr 3rd 2008 12:43PM
I'm happy for Ken. As for the dealership, as it states in the blog they "bent over backwards?" They bent,but it wasn't backwards...glad to hear it's over.