Yes. I was at Berry BMW Gatwick two months ago. I have dealt with numerous BMW dealers around London. The best tip is not to trust or put faith in any sales person. They can be nice on first encounter but be complete idiots after you have signed the dotted line.
Sales people move around too so even a good dealership can have crap staff.
The chap we dealt with for our X3 let our order lapse into production without any of the options we wanted. He was well aware that we were factory ordering because no stock cars have the combination of options we want.
To make it worse, he didn't return my calls over a 6 day period. Needless to say, he left the business after we escalated to his manager.
Just focus on getting the best deal possible.
I had a deposit on an X5 at one dealer last week, but I didn't like his attitude from the moment I arrived at the dealership. We had an appointment and despite me arriving on time, he kept me waiting for fifteen minutes. He knew I was literally the other side of a wall, but he didn't know I knew who he was (we hadn't met before but I looked him up on the dealer website), but he just told the receptionist to tell me to take a seat. He could have popped his head around the corner, introduced himself and said "I'll be with you in a few minutes, grab a coffee", but obviously he couldn't be arsed. So I just had to wait until HE was ready for me. I mean, I'm only there to potentially spend £60,000 on a new car. When he did eventually speak to me, he didn't even offer me a drink. We went for a test drive and then eventually we settled on a price and I shook his hand and paid a £500 deposit. Initially I was going to go for a finance deal, and with the encouragment of the dealer, we applied for it. To cut a long story short, due to my situation, living in Holland but buying a UK car, there was no way we could get a finance deal through. It wasn't a surprise, but it wasn't an issue as my plan B was to just pay cash. The finance deal was so I didn't have a lot of money tied up in a car. However, because I didn't like his attitude, I didn't tell him I had the cash, so he lost his sale. Instead I went to another dealer and negotiated a better deal anyway. 14% discount up from the initial 12.4% at the first dealer.
Since the moment it looked like a finance deal wasn't going to go through, the first dealer's attitude changed, and he just didn't want to know. If he'd treated me better, he'd have had his sale. I emailed twice this week asking when my deposit would be returned, and he deliberately ignored the question. The third email went straight to the finance manager of the dealership and I told him that unless I heard by 1700 that day when my deposit would be returned, I'd be going straight to BMW UK to make a formal complaint. That worked.
Anyway, provisionally picking the new X5 up on 5th July. It took some finding for the exact spec I wanted, but we did it in the end. It was a new order which was going to the dealer, but I'm taking it now.
