BMW is being sued for accusations of inaccurate odometer readings

In Orange County, California, a long time BMW loyal owner is suing BMW for what the owner claims is a lease that turned into a cash cow for BMW.  The BMW enthusiast said this particular 528i just went sour, and eventually blossomed to lemon that carried a heavy price tag with its “magic miles” it accumulated by lease end.

With an alleged out of control odometer, and irrational driving habits brought to the attention to the plaintiff by her longtime accountant, things just didn’t add up.

(IJR News exclusive March, 20,2012) According to an IJR News interview with R.M. Greenman, the plaintiff in this case, she lives one mile from her daughter’s school and works out of her Newport Beach home. She hasn’t been on a major road trip since the economy went bad and hardly ever drives because of the proximity to her daughters school and that she works from home.  Over the course of 2 1/2 years, her BMW 528i cars odometer claims she accumulated over 70,000 miles.

The car, which was repeatedly  brought into the BMW dealerships countless times, was never really address in any capacity according to the plaintiff. In Fact, R.M states that at around 25,000 miles the cars odometer was getting 54 MPG (captured by her cell phone on many occasions), in which BMW confirmed, documented, and fixed “the malfunction.”

Although this owner has owned several BMWs in the past and has never made such claims, she feels she was dealt the ultimate lemon and only agreed to talk to IJR News in order to bring this to the attention of other lease owners that might have been victim to the same type of situation.

The Plaintiff told IJR this, “I asked the dealership to simply give me a new lease with a different car at around the 20,000 – 25,000 mile range (I even called corporate), I made every payment on-time for the entire period of the lease, but I feared driving the car every day.  The worst part is that I could never enjoy the car in almost any capacity and at the end of the lease, I was asked to pay an enormous amount because of the bodacious miles.  I must be in the wrong business, if I could lease cars and get an extra 50k miles added on at the end, it would be a no-brainer .”

Even after over five times of bringing the vehicle into BMW service, BMW and its technicians claimed they couldn’t find the problem. Although documented service records indicate that BMW claims to have fixed a miles per hour signal on the vehicle when it was reading close to 60 miles per gallon in its calculations, the final explanation was  “that it would not affect anything else?” The plaintiff, having a PhD from Stanford in engineering repeatedly claimed to have challenged the technicians and service managers on this improbable explanation, and simply asked “how could it not affect anything else?”

When finally turning the car in at 70,000+ miles the owner claimed to have the original tires, with the exception of one tire being replaced due to a roadside hazard, BMW has argued they are all different tires, yet carfax can’t find such tire purchases other than the one tire the Plaintiff claimed was replaced. Everything else on the car was in its original condition including brake pads, belts hoses, and provided date stamped pictures of an engine that looked factory fresh when vehicle was turned in. The plaintiff in this case feels that she is not alone. In fact, she feels that there are probably several people out there in which this has happened to and it’s possible that with an odometer malfunction on this model, BMW can benefit financially in a fairly very sophisticated fashion.

BMW has denied this claim and in fact after the vehicle was turned in, BMW hired an expert witness to drive around the car and test the alleged accusations. This of course only creates an even more indistinct view, as a chain of custody has been breached from the previous owner. In Journalism, we compare these types of tests as to having a drug dealer test the narcotics he got arrested for without the cops overseeing the operation. When a customer turns in a vehicle for any kind of service or especially at the termination of a lease they obviously also lose control of whatever happens to that vehicle.

IJR news asks any BMW owner that has experienced a similar situation to contact us immediately and we will forward your information to the plaintiff and her lawyer in order to entertain the possibility of a class action or simply add witness if this case goes to trial . In this case THE BICKEL LAW FIRM, INC. a California attorney firm that specializes in lemon law lawsuits,  has taken this case and is preparing for trial if the case can’t be settled in the next few weeks.

IJR News is a consumer advocate company and simply brings various articles, whether submitted to us for evaluation or investigated  by our staff, to the forefront of World-class news.  We encourage all readers to confirm facts on anything you read on the internet and or print.

V.P. IJR NEWS – Senior Journalist – contactIJRnews@gmail.com