Greetings, Unfortunately my first post here isn't a happy one. My wife and I purchased a CPO 328i in March, and chose to finance the car to get the no-cost maintenance plan promotion. Our sales person told us that we needed to keep the loan for six months, before paying it off to get the maintenance plan. When I called BMW FS to confirm the earliest date that I could pay off the loan, I was told that they had no restriction. The finance manager at the dealer suggested I call BMW NA customer service, and upon calling them, customer service suggested I call the dealer. Calls to the dealership sales manager have gone unreturned, and they are too far away to drive by. No one seems to know when the maintenance plan will show up on our VIN. If anyone else has taken advantage of this promotion, can you please tell me your experience, so that I have some idea of how this should go?
I'm not familiar with the CPO offering, but you do have a copy of the sales contract. Unless a minimum time is written into the contract, then I would agree with BMW FS... No restriction. I suspect, however, that the dealership told you this because they quite probably get rated on what is called "performing" loans...loans that are being paid on-time, and are carried out for some length of time. When I purchased my 2010 328i, there was no rebate for cash payment, but a 2 year, 0.9% finance rate with a $2500 rebate. Planning to pay cash, I was not overtly informed by the dealership of the finance option (I found out about it on the BMW web-site). Obviously, I took the finance deal over cash payment, but since my sales rep has sold me several cars and knew I intended to pay the note off immediately, he asked me to make a minimum of 6 payments before paying off the note. That's why I suspect your dealership gave you the 6 month minimum. Of course, I could be completely wrong...
Thanks! I suspected that they wanted me to make six payments as part of some dealer incentive program. By the time I get this resolved, I'll probably have made six payments anyways. What worries me is that no one can tell me when or how the maintenance plan is applied to my car.
Now, that's a real problem. It seems that you have purchased a box, yet you have no idea if the box contains gold, lead, or shreadded paper. Someone knows what the plan does (and does not) do. You may have no other option other than to camp out at the dealer that sold it to you (which is what I would do, personally), in order to get the skinny on the details.
Indeed. Thanks again for all your input. I would be camping out at the dealer right now, but we ended up getting this car from a dealer many miles away, so I can only pester them by phone and email. I think I might go into our local dealer and ask them what their process is.
