I recently bought a 2001 BMW 750 IL from BMWFLA on EBAY. The vehicle was described as "in excellent condition" (!) in the ebay ad. I also called the seller (Howard) before I placed my "Buy it now" bid and specifically asked if the car had any scratches on the exterior. The answer was "the car is immaculate (!!), we are a BMW dealership".

I flew down to Florida from Atlanta and took my wife with me to show her the immaculate car I was about to purchase. Much to my disappointment I discovered an ugly scratch on the car that was stretching from the rear left door handle, to the rear left panel and a dent a little bit further in the back on the same panel. The scratch was poorly covered in a way that does not honor the BMW name, as you can judge for yourself in the pictures below.

Note that I am not referring to normal wear and tear for a car of this age and with 69K miles. Hence, I am not mentioning the chips and smaller scratches I noticed on the front of the car and a couple of little dents here and there, or some rust and stains on the doors and the interior. These are OK.

The other sales rep, who was very helpful otherwise, also mentioned he would not use the words "immaculate" or "excellent condition" when describing the body of the car because of the scratch we noticed.

Although I was disappointed, I still thought we can resolve the issue amicably. But my hopes were short lived when the sales manager, Neil, came and said that there's nothing he can do about it and we can back away from the deal because he already has a customer just a phone call away. Now that's just a poor sample of the old used car salesmanship school. HELO!! Everybody on Ebay knows that Ebay doesn't work like that. He also mentioned that it will cost us only $300 to fix the car (!!!). Of course, they are the BMW dealership, they should know better. You'll see later that the estimate I got in Atlanta was $1584.30. Just a rounding error...

I checked my flight options back to Atlanta but the bad news was that we were about to spend again a lot of money just to fly back home without the car, more than the $300 I needed to spend on fixing the car. This was the only reason I took ownership of the car. I don't think this seller understands or cares about the ebay sales etiquette or customer service altogether. Honest sellers disclose specific damages and flaws in their description and they provide detail pics with the damaged area so people know what they are bidding on. Judge for yourself if it's worth your time and money to do business with

LAUDERDALE BMW or BMWFLA on Ebay

1400 South Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316

Scratch on the rear panel Rear Panel view. This is normal wear and tear according to the seller.

Scratch on the door handle Door Handle View. Again, this is normal wear and tear according to the seller.

Repair Estimate $1,584.30. This is a far cry from the seller's quote of $300.