Autoblog

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]

UPDATE: 3-24-08 -- This was left on the original M3 forum thread by Ken, the nearly-defrauded winner of the eBay auction: "Sorry its taken so long to post a update. The site is very slow (understandably). This morning, BMW of Lincoln has agreed to sell me the car at a price of 60K, with certain conditions. I'll be going over the conditions with the dealership tommorow, and I hope to have everything finalized by tommorow afternoon." You can read the rest of his comment here. It's pretty cool what the Internet can do...

Apparently all is not kosher in corn country. BMW of Lincoln, Nebraska posted an auction on eBay for a brand new M3 Sedan for $60,000. Perhaps they were hoping for the kind of eBay madness that would push the price to six figures (something other dealers are doing right on the show floor). If that's what they were after, well, they didn't get it. The car was won by a gentleman in California for the listed price: $60,000.

The problem is that the dealer doesn't want to give him the car. Not long after the auction ended, the winning bidder got a call from BMW of Nebraska telling him the auction was "a mistake," and that he couldn't have the car. In spite of the fact that the dealership changed the Buy It Now price twice -- and so was paying attention to the auction -- and eBay rules that make it clear that if someone wins the auction then you must complete the transaction, the buyer is still trying to get someone to give him the car he won at the winning bid price. Follow the link for the full story, and to you, Dooma350, good luck. Thanks for the tip, Ken!

[Source: M3post.com]