BMW of Columbia

Reason for Visit: Sales

I recommend this dealer: No

My Review of BMW of Columbia:
I recently saw the article on Consumerist and had to add my review. Serious Bimmer owners (or potential owners) need to stay far, far away. This dealership is owned by Group One Automotive and is a third-tier operation all the way through.

Sales force is staffed by used car lot rejects using every pressure sales tactic in the book. Examples:
- "We'd lose money selling cars at $500 over invoice."
- "No discounts on that model...we can't keep them on the lot"...with 5 unsold examples gathering dust and nobody looking.
- "What would it take for you to buy today?"

Their behavior is totally inappropriate for a luxury dealer; the Lexus dealer just down the street is a completely different experience. Unfortunately this is the only BMW dealer in the area so I would be stuck with their spotty service department even if I bought the car at Century in Greenville. Looks like Lexus or Infiniti for me...

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Reason for Visit: Sales

I recommend this dealer: No

My Review of BMW of Columbia:
This dealership was formerly known as Hancock BMW which also rated low on this site.

I went to test drive a 135i demo at BMW of Columbia in Columbia, SC. The car in question was being pulled in from a test drive as we drove onto the lot. A salesman followed us around as we looked at the car, sat in it, played with controls, etc. He knew virtually nothing about the 135i but that didn't worry me a lot. I asked if I could test drive the car and was told yes we could take it out after they took my license info. We went inside the dealership and after waiting a couple of minutes the salesman came back and said the manager wanted to keep the miles down on the demo, therefore I wouldn't be able to drive the car unless I demonstrated I was "a serious customer". I'm not sure what could have indicated that we weren't serious, and the salesman wasn't clear on what we needed to do to demonstrate "seriousness". I politely informed the salesman that I wasn't going to be buying today but in no case would I buy a car without driving it first. His response was "well, we just need to know that you're serious...", again without indicating what would be required to demonstrate this. At that point I simply said "congrats, you just lost a potential customer". I then found the sales manager and told him the same thing.

Additional information:

* I was with my wife and 23 year old son, who drove his own BMW onto the lot. Needless to say, we looked like people that could afford a 1-series.

* The demo had just returned from a test drive with "serious customers" who subsequently left without buying a car.

* Neither the salesman or sales manager indicated what their metric for customer "seriousness" was, and I was in no mood to attempt mind-reading. If they'd simply ran our credit score they would have been showing us most anything on the lot...

* Thankfully I do have other satisfactory options for where to buy to the car, but I will not excuse the sleazy behavior of this particular outfit. I will gladly drive two hours to avoid these clowns.

Note that I'd already been warned by an enthusiast acquaintance of mine that BMW of Columbia is a low-class leasing mill. My experience seems to bear that out, as we probably didn't look like we were going lease anything.

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