Flow BMW Misrepresented the condition of a used vehicle (i.e. lied several times) Winston-Salem Winston-Salem North Carolina

I regret that I just now discovered this site or Mr. B from Knoxville may have avoided his trip to this dealership. On December 31, 2007, yes that long ago, I found a very attractive BMW convertible at a great price listed online by Flow BMW. I phoned the dealership, spoke with a female sales person, have forgoten her name, who answered all of my questions except two. Which she promised she would research and answer the next morning, New Year's Day. She phoned me at around 10 am with the answers. I told her I would leave right away to travel the 2.5 hours to see and likely purchase the vehicle. I told her I would be arriving by 1 pm at the latest. She assured me she would get the keys to the car and hold it until I got there. At approximately 12:15 pm, I was half an hour away and this sales person phoned me and said that the USED CAR SALES MANAGER was selling the car and there was nothing she could do about it.
I screamed and yelled to several people in management. And when I insisted on talking to "the man who's name was on the big sign out front" as I put it, I was promised a return phone call. A managing partner phoned me about an hour later and apologized and promised to send me a check for my gas. He did send $100.

Nevertheless, this type of behavior seems to be the norm at this dealership.

I regret that I just now discovered this site or Mr. B from Knoxville may have avoided his trip to this dealership. On December 31, 2007, yes that long ago, I found a very attractive BMW convertible at a great price listed online by Flow BMW. I phoned the dealership, spoke with a female sales person, have forgoten her name, who answered all of my questions except two. Which she promised she would research and answer the next morning, New Year's Day. She phoned me at around 10 am with the answers. I told her I would leave right away to travel the 2.5 hours to see and likely purchase the vehicle. I told her I would be arriving by 1 pm at the latest. She assured me she would get the keys to the car and hold it until I got there. At approximately 12:15 pm, I was half an hour away and this sales person phoned me and said that the USED CAR SALES MANAGER was selling the car and there was nothing she could do about it.
I screamed and yelled to several people in management. And when I insisted on talking to "the man who's name was on the big sign out front" as I put it, I was promised a return phone call. A managing partner phoned me about an hour later and apologized and promised to send me a check for my gas. He did send $100.

Nevertheless, this type of behavior seems to be the norm at this dealership.

I regret that I just now discovered this site or Mr. B from Knoxville may have avoided his trip to this dealership. On December 31, 2007, yes that long ago, I found a very attractive BMW convertible at a great price listed online by Flow BMW. I phoned the dealership, spoke with a female sales person, have forgoten her name, who answered all of my questions except two. Which she promised she would research and answer the next morning, New Year's Day. She phoned me at around 10 am with the answers. I told her I would leave right away to travel the 2.5 hours to see and likely purchase the vehicle. I told her I would be arriving by 1 pm at the latest. She assured me she would get the keys to the car and hold it until I got there. At approximately 12:15 pm, I was half an hour away and this sales person phoned me and said that the USED CAR SALES MANAGER was selling the car and there was nothing she could do about it.
I screamed and yelled to several people in management. And when I insisted on talking to "the man who's name was on the big sign out front" as I put it, I was promised a return phone call. A managing partner phoned me about an hour later and apologized and promised to send me a check for my gas. He did send $100.

Nevertheless, this type of behavior seems to be the norm at this dealership.

It could have simply been a miscommunication but it is best to err on the side of caution when you are spending over $50k on a car. I am currently in the market for a BMW and FLOW was one of the dealerships I have contacted regarding some used cars I was looking at, as well as some new ones. I will opt out of their dealership now. Thankfully you were able to find these problems before you bought the car, not all are so lucky. BTW, I'm originally from Kingsport, TN area as well (Gate City). That was quiet a drive!

I'm a longstanding customer of Flow BMW, have bought thousands of dollars of parts there for various older BMWs I own/have owned, and I personally know many of the sales staff as well as the owner and employees you dealt with. I have to say, it is 100% not in the nature of any of the staff at Flow BMW/Mini to be dishonest in any practice. I'm sure the entire situation was all due to misinformation or simply incomplete disclosure of prior damages to the vehicle.

And bravo to whichever one of you at the dealership wrote the reply. Candor and honesty in dealing with a disgruntled customer are values you do NOT see just anywhere these days.

I'll be seeing you soon, I'm sure.

First, let me state that Flow BMW does not dispute or rebut any of the feelings of frustration and disappointment expressed by Mr. B., Kingsport, Tennessee. In reading his report, we accept that he felt he was being misled. However, we do not believe that it is accurate to state that he was purposively given erroneous information.

From our perspective, the following is what happened: We had a signed Damage Disclosure from the previous owner that the vehicle had not been in any accident causing 25% damage to the value at the time of the occurrence. When asked by the customer if there had been any damage, we relied on both the signed statement of the owner and an additional statement of "casual damage" from backing into a mailbox. Unfortunately, we failed to run a CarFax report at the time we took possession of the vehicle.

Unlike what Mr. B stated, we fully reconditioned the vehicle and we have copies of all the bills to prove it. Additionally, we have the copy of the bill for four new tires (We do not dispute that the previous owner may have purchased one new tire. However, unmatched tires do not meet our standards for reconditioning so all 4 tires were replaced).

As regarding the issue of not providing contact information from one owner to another prospective owner, it is not a practice of our Company to provide any contact information of our customers to a third party without the express permission by the previous owner to do so.

While Mr. B was taking a test drive our General Sales Manager called the previous owner to ask permission for Mr. B to talk with them about the paint work on the rear of the vehicle. The GSM called his phone and when no one answered, he left a message. He then called the customer's office and was told the customer was on vacation and would return until the following Monday. All of this communication was relayed to Mr. B.

We do not question that when Mr. B contacted someone at the household (perhaps a son as stated by Mr B) that he was told the true cause of the the accident. Unfortunately, we did not have that information when we did the trade or when we spoke with Mr. B. When we did become aware of the situation we made a subsequent customer aware of the repair, as is always our practice.

Because we did not have the appropriate information available when he arrived, we offered to remiburse Mr. B for the fuel that spent coming to our dealership, In addition, we told him that if the issues were cleared up in a manner satisfactory to him that we would deliver the vehicle at not charge to his home in Tennessee. In retropect, we should have also offered to compensate him for the lost time that he incurred by traveling to our dealership. We have a commitment that in our company if we have failed then we will bear the cost of the failure. Part of the cost included the time of the customer and we are prepared to extend that offer to him.

We apologize for underperforming in our due diligence and our customer interaction with Mr. B. We failed to perform the necessary preparation for his visit and we wasted his time. We now pull a CarFax on every vehicle in ensure that we have the complete history of the vehicle.

We hope that Mr. B will contact us and allow us to reimburse him for his lost time. As a winner of eight consecutive years the "BMW Center of Excellence" distinction, we are greatly disappointed anytime we fail to live consistently with our core values of earning trust, doing everything with excellence, and providing more. We have a deep commitment to treating customers like guests in our home, earning their trust by always doing the right thing, and treating them with respect. We sell preowned vehicles all over the world off of our website based on our honesty, fair prices, high resolution photos, video walkarounds, and straightforward "nothing to hide descriptions." We make all of our information on the vehicle completely transparent to the customer. Being intentionally underhanded or misleading is antithetical to everything we stand for and how we do business.