Dealer wants to do 1200 miles break in service at 650 miles.

[dawei213]

I took delivery of my new M3 yesterday in Spartensburg, SC at the BMW PDC (awesome time btw). I drove up 640 miles to Philadelphia straight through, varying the rpms through out the entire trip. Made a few stops here and there and took me about 10 hours. I dropped the car to the dealer for them to perform the inspection and put on the emission and inspection sticker and was told that the 1200 miles service is recommended now. I asked why and they mentioned the data pulled from the car said it's time to do it based on the driving condition.

my question is, should I wait until closer to the 1200 miles or is doing it now ok? it was mostly highway driving going from 2.5k rpm to 3.5k rpm varying. I feel I havent even given it much city driving to give it other varying conditions. what do you guys think?

[AIRHEIR]

Wait the 1200 miles. If you near philly make the trip and go to Thompson BMW and ask for Matt or Laura. Can't go wrong.

[Poiseuille]

just from what you've written here, I don't like this idea at all. I would need a pretty specific explanation as to why this dealer thinks the car is sufficiently broken in at half the mileage recommended by the factory, and even with that I'd likely ignore him anyway. "convenience" and "well you're here" do not qualify as good reasons. as an example: one thing that happens at the 1200 is drain and fill the diff, which was filled at the factory with break-in fluid. that's a mighty expensive diff in there and I'd be inclined to do EXACTLY what the factory recommends with that. I'd love to know how this turns out and what the dealer's explanation is.

Edit: very much agree with the above comment regarding Matt & Laura at Thompson BMW

[FriedPiston]

Always trust the manual over dealer recommendation.

[F80Dreamer]

Definitely wait until 1200 miles...I trust the M division in Germany much more than some local dealership.

[dawei213]

So the one thing that I should have mentioned is the break in service wasn't a recommendation by the dealer per say. They pulled the data off of the car and how it was explained to me was that data from the car stated the 1200 miles service should be done now. I took a look at the paper work (which I have snapped a picture of) but it had various telemetry info from the car and it was the car that indicated the service should be done now and not the dealer. Although I didn't see that indicator from the car itself. So i'm not sure what to make of it. I had two service advisers tell me they don't make the determination, the car does and it can vary from car to car depending on the driving conditions.

I just called them to ask them not to perform the service and see if they can send me a copy of the report for me to go over.

BTW, Thompson is too far from me, about 1h15mins. I'm near West Chester so Otto is right here and I hear they have a pretty good reputation as well.

[dawei213]

Just a quick update, so I challenged the shop's assertion that on the early break-in service change. Originally I was told the data on the car said it was time to do the break-in service, however I didn't see it in iDrive nor did I see any notification. I asked them to email me the information but I never received anything. I received two subsequent follow-up call. The first one was from another SA stating that it's imperative that the break-in service be performed per the car data (again they haven't provide that data yet). Then the next call was clarification that the tech agreed that the break-in service can be performed at the 1200 miles range.

I was thinking that would be the end of that discussion but it wasn't. I was then called back by my original SA saying the shop insist that the service be performed because even if it hasn't hit the miles based condition (1200 miles), it nearly at the time based condition. That perplexed me as I was like "what? I have to hit 1200 miles in a certain time frame?" She then explained to me since the car is nearly a year old ... OH WHAT?!?! A year old?? The car's production date is late August. Ok that seems to throw them for a loop.

The SA went back to confirm and realized they made a mistake and assumed the 2018 car was build last year in 2017. After that they FINALLY confirmed I don't need to do the break-in service now and it was a mistake on their end.

Now, I really don't know why they think that car that only has 650 miles was build last year (ok that can happen if it's been sitting in the lot), but when I dropped it off, I told them I just got back from the PDC meaning it's a brand new M3. Secondly, this is something they could have easily confirmed when I challenged them in the first place. Needless to say I'm a little bit underwhelmed by experience will be more vigilant when taking my car in for service to make sure the right things were performed.

TLDR: For service, if you feel something isn't right, keep asking questions. Ask service to check check check.

[overlook637]

The nickname stealership was created for a reason. They make money from selling cars and selling services. The 'service advisor' is a salesmen for services. The SA is often not trained at all in cars.