Anyone with experience with BMW Thailand ?

[porsek]

My friend is on his 2nd year of his 3 year full warranty. He has a BMW 3 series.

In the last couple of months he has been having serious problems with the engine shutting down when he is driving.

Seriously scary condidering he is moving in fast traffic when the engine light pops on and the engine then shuts down and suddenly slows down while the power steering locks.

He has taken it in for service three times, shown them photographs of the engine light but they say there is no record of a problem in the cars computer history so they can not do anything.

There solution has been to drive the car themselves waiting for the problem to happen. Of course it doesn't. Eventually they changed a valve or something and said it was fine. Two hours after getting it back the engine seized again while he was on the freeway.

He's taken it back on and now they say there may be something wrong with the engine (really?!!). They are waiting for spare parts from BMW thailand and have told him today it is a 20 day wait, at least.

They say there is no courtesy car option available. I find this hard to believe... It's BMW for christs sakes.

Any one have any previous experience with this company??

[pgrahmm]

They should have a capture co pilot device that can freeze frame the parameters at time of failure to diag and repair....sometimes with a deposit a customer can take it for a week or so and press the button at failure then take in for repair....that being said I worked for BMW for awhile and was not impressed....if a tech problem arose it was not unusual at all for the factory to say our cars don't do that...plus a high percent are hanger queens....never suprised to see one on the side of the road....given the limited locations to repair in Thailand & limited proper tow rigs I wouldn't trust to have one out on the road here....

[mortenaa]

First of all, his car should have a 5 year warranty. This is the standard BSI agreement.

The car keeps records of absolutely all errors - so if they say otherwise they lie.. ?? You can download an app and read the codes yourself with a OBD adapter.

BMW has several dealers. If he is not happy with the work his current dealer does, change. BMW sells a lot of cars now, but their dealer network is still quite small, so some dealer may have a lot to do. Go to another dealer.

A courtesy car is up to dealer I think...

I am very happy with my dealer and they are able to sort out all my problems and questions so far. The three BMW's I've had/have has been very good. Minor problems, that has been sorted out.

[mortenaa]

One of our members did have a lot of trouble with a new BMW, he ended up with a replacement car...

With 10,000 cars sold every year, some people will have problems. Some models have more problems than others. Japanese cars tend to be more reliable, but on the other hand dreadfully boring. I have a 2008 M3, and so far the only problem has been a dead alternator. I think that was my fault actually, as I installed under-drive pulleys..

[SimonCC]

Blew one of the turbos of my BMW F10 and the tow truck arrived within the hour. Unfortunately they had to order the new turbo charger from Germany. Strangely enough they had no spares in Thailand even though they mentioned I wasn't the first one with the same problem.

Got an similar 5 series for a couple of weeks right away.

[porsek]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply.

It does seem that it may be this particular location that is not in any hurry to address the problem. We have contacted the main customer Service number and I hope that they can be of more help. I'm waiting to hear back from my friend to see what they had to say.

[vtjforyou]

Why it always happen with bmw and not benz ?

[mortenaa]

Why it always happen with bmw and not benz ?

What does not happen with Benz? Benz had a lot of quality issues over the years, transmission failure and so on. There are so many suppliers now that supplies parts to many different cars. For example one company called GETRAG is the company behind the transmissions found in both Mercedes and BMW, along with a bunch of other cars. My M3 has a GETRAG DCT. Another supplier is ZF which Audi and also BMW uses. My other BMW has an engine developed by Peugeot. Even I was surprised about that one...

[pedro01]

One of our members did have a lot of trouble with a new BMW, he ended up with a replacement car...

2 Replacement cars....

I think I was unlucky that the main customer service director for BMW Thailand was on business when I got the second problem. Hence my bitching and moaning on here about it.

I think the key issue is the dealership. You don't buy cars from BMW Thailand, so when it comes to how well they take care of you, it's going to be a mixture of which dealership it is and a bit of culture clash.

I was with the dealership at Charansanitwong - and they were amazing. It's them that took care of the courtesy cars (which we must have clocked up 4,000 KM on with the issues we had). The solutions to problems well - they were quick to find mine the first time but second time, we had the additional wait of a BMW engineer to visit them to confirm their suspicions.

When the second car went, there was a long wait from BMW Thailand on a solution because I wanted a replacement car (7 weeks old) and we needed to wait for the big boss @ BMW to OK that. The dealership had told me that if BMW said no, they would buy the car off me themselves.

Then of course, the culture clash. If you handle these things like you would back in the west, then the walls may well come up. I'm not saying it's right, just the way it is. That's not my experience with BMW, just my experience with Thailand.

Which dealership was it? I know there's been complaints about one of the dealerships in terms of after sales service, but I won't name & shame.

By the way - how did you celebrate New Years Eve 2000? Great to see in the Millenium....

[pedro01]

One of our members did have a lot of trouble with a new BMW, he ended up with a replacement car...

With 10,000 cars sold every year, some people will have problems. Some models have more problems than others. Japanese cars tend to be more reliable, but on the other hand dreadfully boring. I have a 2008 M3, and so far the only problem has been a dead alternator. I think that was my fault actually, as I installed under-drive pulleys..

Not to forget the amount of technology in the car.

There's more in them, so more to go wrong.

So of course a Fiat 500 will probably have less go wrong than a 528....

[Woodsie888]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply.

It does seem that it may be this particular location that is not in any hurry to address the problem. We have contacted the main customer Service number and I hope that they can be of more help. I'm waiting to hear back from my friend to see what they had to say.

I had a similar sounding problem to your friend's, with my car which would only occur after using kick down at speeds over 120 kph.

The motor would instantly cut out and I'd have to move over to the slow lane and stop.

I took photos of the screen each time as the fault never showed up later at BMW., which made it difficult to diagnose.

Eventually it was diagnosed as a faulty Transmission ECU which seemed reasonable to me. At that point I learned that the ECU is inside the transmission and is not a serviceable part, therefore a new transmission was installed andI never had the problem again.

[AsianExport]

Hello, BMW under BSI, has anybody tried to give few thousand to get his car fixed faster ? can you PM me which garage has been nice to you ? 2 weeks to fix few problems is too long ! Thanks.