Marshall BMW Customer

Hi my names Lee,

I have a story to tell about a car I bought on finance, and am now stuck/struggling with through no fault ofy own and am looking for advice. I'll explain but it is a rather long winded story.

I bought a 2008 e92 BMW 330I IN 2015 from an auto trader ad, the company selling the car was called autocentre100 I believe, the car had 72000 miles and came with a full service history, looked well maintained, sounded fine no previous crashes or issues. I financed the car via "close brothers motor finance" not my best decision but I was capable of the repayments and as the car was not that old and in vgc I felt confident I would pay the car off before any real problems arose.

I have had the car two years, run it up to 93000 miles and in that time, I have had to replace all the wheels, I found out after going through two tyres my wheels had cracked/split and had been previously repaired, (badly). I found out this was a manufacturers defect but BMW are unwilling to compensate customers for this. So I bit the bullet and bought a new set of different wheels. Now about 6 weeks ago, my car started to run rough from cold, I took the car to a German car specialist (as I know dealerships are pricey) to get it diagnosed. They came back with a report saying the car needed 6 new fuel injectors and a sensor at a cost of £2200. I was a bit shocked at this and when I asked the mechanic he said its a known fault with this model that the OEM BMW parts break, so with this information I rang BMW, found out my car did have a recall notice for this part, but that it had had the work done in 2009, and that only 5 of the injectors were replaced.

So deflated that the car would still potentially need the injectors replacing I got a second opinion from another independent garage, they came up with the same result, replace all injectors. But I got a cheaper quote at £1800. With this still being a big sum of money for what was not even that old of a car, I decided I would head to a BMW dealership and be 100% sure that if this was the issue, I knew I was paying for the right work. After BMW had the car for a week, they came back saying it only actually needed one injector, at £600, this seemed logical as he car had had 5 replaced at the recall, it made sense that it may only need one. So happy with this I gave BMW permission to carry the work out. Got the car back, drove home, did some work to get it through MOT, (needed a replacement shock absorber) next day I planned to drive it back for the retest, started the car, and the same rough running issue comes back, but this time with an engine management light.

So i take the car back to BMW, explain the problem, leave it with them, (adding that I'm not happy). While they had the car I checked out my dashcam footage, and I noted that when I explained to BMW that the car was running rough from cold, they had started the car, drove it and cleaned it before giving it to the mechanic, I even have voiceover of the mechanic getting in the car, starting it and saying, " oh great, can't do the cold start now" at which point he realised I had a dashcam and unplugged it.

BMW rang me a week later and said the car would need a new high pressure fuel pump, at £800+ as you can imagine at this point I was rather disappointed as I'm spending close to the original garages quotes. But I needed the car and wanted it fixed, so I said carry on. Get it working. Another week goes by, but this time BMW say that the car is making a strange sound, so I go and check the car out, the engine sounds like its struggling, badly, the pitch was changing and it sounded really loud in the engine bay. I said this isn't right, something is wrong, so they asked to keep the car to do more tests, but I explained to them I can't afford any more money to repair it, and explained how they had neglected to follow my instruction on recreating the problems, and that each time they called, there was yet another cost.

So yet another week goes by, BMW replaced the low pressure sensor at cost, after doing this, the car would no longer start, so they then replaced an "atmospheric" sensor again at cost. After all this, it seemed to be OK, but credit to BMW they said, we would like to keep it another day to test it from cold to make sure all is OK. Next day I get a call, the car is still having issues, we need to keep it longer. After another week (week 4) they come back to me and say it needs another injector, which they again did at cost. But yet again, this doesn't fix the issue, so I said to them, find out what's going on, because this is just one problem after another, it almost seems like they are guessing at this point. After another week, (week 5!) BMW call, and say, the car needs all the injectors replacing, (like the original quotes from the original garages) and that it needs de-coking as fuel has been leaking past the injectors, this all comes out at a whopping £4500 to fix.

At this point I'm beyond belief, and am unsure what the best course of action is, I have raised a form with the motor ombudsman service which BMW are apart of, but at this point I wonder what i will gain from any of this. Considering the car is still on finance, and the repair cost is around half the value of the car. Anyone have any advice?

Parts of the story may seem distorted as well as this has been such a long and drawn out process im struggling to recall all the details. Any help is much appreciated, Lee