In March of this year I reached out to one of the popular BMW brokers on this forum about getting an M4. I was told by the broker that there was availability, so I paid half of the broker fee ($249.50), paid a deposit to the dealership, and submitted (and received approval for) a credit application with BMW. At that point I was told that we were just waiting for an allocation and that the dealership was expecting to get some within two weeks. Weeks and months go by with no progress on getting an allocation, the whole time being reassured that it should be coming in soon. Fast forward to 6/9, still no allocation, and the broker has stopped responding to my emails/phone calls. After a few weeks with no response from the broker I reached out to the dealership directly and they told me that they were not going to be able to honor the deal and would only be selling the car at full sticker.
The dealership refunded my deposit within a few days of me asking. The broker on the other hand has continued to ignore my emails, including several refund requests. Unfortunately the fee was paid on Venmo, since the broker claimed that their payment system was down at the time, so a charge back isn’t an option. The last time the broker replied to any of my contact attempts was 5/21.
This whole situation has obviously been very frustrating. Being ghosted by my broker (especially one that people speak highly of) has only made this situation worse. At the end of the day, the amount that I paid the broker is small relative to the cost of the car. Had the broker been upfront and communicated that the deal fell through I might not have pursued a refund at all, but since that is not the case, it’s a matter of principle for me.
I know that I am not the first person to have this experience with this broker, I saw a similar thread on here a few weeks ago and some reviews as well. Any suggestions on how to go about getting my money back would be appreciated, but at the very least I wanted to take this opportunity to share my experience so maybe other people can learn from it.
seems like this broker is a hit or miss, quite literally, some people get crazy deals (9% m4) and some people getting ghosted, have you read this thread? IDK if this is the same broker though
Doubt anything’s gonna come of it. I’ve never seen this broker respond on any threads that were created in the past outlining the same issue with the same broker. The approach seems to be - let’s keep quiet until the storm passes then it’s business as usual.
I guess @GOAT was wrong, its not a democracy. The mods slow threads trashing thieving brokers. But why? Are they still paying to advertise? Do they want to protect other brokers who now have to deal with weary clients?
Honestly, who cares if the post “get hot”. It is the internet for god’s sake.
This seems to have happened 4 times, 3 are documented on the review thread of the broker. One elected not to leave a review after he got his money back after some delay.
I can understand why Leasehackr doesn’t want to be responsible, but it seems like there should be another way to hold brokers accountable other than just the review threads. Leasehackr gives brokers a special status, do they get to keep that status as long as they are paying or are there other terms they need to comply with?
You know who cares? The people that want to hear what happened and not wade through hundreds of comments from people in the peanut gallery who were in no way, shape or form involved and are doing nothing but speculating.
THAT’S why it was slowed down. Not some drummed up conspiracy to protect anyone.
The purpose of slow mode is to encourage more deliberation between comments from the same person on topics that we foresee to go or have already gone hot in an unproductive way. This would give time for the other party to respond and prevent one-sided assumptions to build up. We have reached out to the broker for a response.
Or, just maybe, they don’t want a dumpster fire on the site. I don’t know why everything with you has to be so draconian. Frankly, if you don’t like it just leave. Not sure what exactly you are contributing other than this keyboard warrior conspiracy crap.
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