I recently experienced an unfortunate situation on the highway where while driving the car in front of mine’s bumper flew off the back and hit the front of my car. This caused some significant damage to my front bumper and grill. My car is a leased 2021 BMW 330e.
I’ve gone thru my insurance company Farmer’s (the guy didn’t stop to give me his info) to get the repair done so I’m on the hook for my deductible, which is fine, but I’ve run into a little problem.
My insurance company gave me two options.
They send me a check and I get it repaired somewhere.
I go thru one of their licensed shops and everything automatically gets billed.
For the sake of efficiency, I went with option 2. Everything was going fine and the car got towed to their collision center. I got a call from the collision center about signinng some paperwork. According to them, my insurance policy doesn’t have an OEM endorsement meaning I’m not guaranteed new OEM parts in the repair if they cost more. I would have to pay the difference for them.
My question is, does anyone have any experience with this in regards to BMW lease-return? This is a certified BMW collision center so will BMWFS care if the parts are aftermarket or used instead of OEM as long as they’re installed properly? I’m trying to decide what the best option is here.
Read your contract, but it could state that any repairs are to be done with OEM BMW parts. I would suspect some problems if they find out that there were aftermarket parts used for repairs.
This is industry standard. Some of the larger more preffered carriers offer an OEM endorsment. You will be fine on the turn in with acceptable non oem parts. This is one of the reasons you leased the car- it will not be your issue (having the accident or non oem parts).
When I leased an Audi, the contract specifically called for OEM parts. The windshield got cracked, and my insurance (GEICO) told me my policy allowed them to use non-OEM parts. Turned out there were no aftermarket windshields available, so they paid for an OEM one.
On my wife’s Camry, GEICO refused to pay for an OEM bumper. The aftermarket one they used looks pretty good, but it is easy to tell it is not an OEM part. If this is true for aftermarket BMW bumpers, you might have a problem on lease return, assuming the lease agreement calls for OEM parts.
