Facing Online Onslaught, Dealership Honors eBay Sale

By consumerist.com March 24, 2008

The dealership that refused to honor a BMW 3 Sedan for sold on eBay for $60,000 seems to have buckled under the deluge of criticism, emails, and phone calls made by irate internetizens sympathetic to the buyer’s plight. A post by buyer Ken on m3post.com says that the dealership has agreed to honor the original price. However, there will be certain “conditions,” which Ken wasn’t yet able to specify. Ken’s story appeared in various auto forums, and on Autoblog, Consumerist, Fark, and Digg (although for some reason, it got buried even though it has 475+ diggs…dealership sockpuppets at work?). Online social justice networking is in effect.

PREVIOUSLY: BMW Dealer Refuses To Honor eBay Sale

Tagged With: , ,
«
»

Comments

  1. dubs29 says:
    April 13, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    The eBay Bimmer is on its way to L.A.
    By RICHARD PIERSOL/Lincoln Journal Star
    Friday, Apr 04, 2008 – 05:55:58 pm CDT
    The Jerez-black BMW sedan is well on its way to Ken Tanisaka in L.A., but the whiff of burnt rubber remains in Lincoln.

    An Internet blog fight over the eBay auction of a BMW M3 sedan by Husker Auto Group raged on for weeks while winning bidder Tanisaka and his lawyer tried to come to terms with Husker Auto and their lawyer.

    After much rumbling and grumbling, the car shipped out to Tanisaka on Thursday, Husker Auto said.
    “I am pleased the dealership has gone ahead and honored this contract,” Tanisaka said by phone Friday.

    “I can’t help but feel this is a situation that could have been avoided. I’m getting the car I was entitled to, but I’m stuck with a $10,000 legal bill.”

    That brings his total expense to about what the car might have cost without all the hubbub.

    “It’s been a stressful experience,” Tanisaka said.

    Some facts are not in dispute:

    Tanisaka bid $60,000 and won the car on what Husker Auto Group said was a mistake. They had failed to post a reserve, or minimum price, and said the sale shouldn’t have occurred at Tanisaka’s bid.

    After Tanisaka posted questions on a BMW blog on his difficulty getting an agreement from Husker Auto Group to finish the deal, the issue exploded all over the automotive information superhighway.

    The viewing and commenting audience grew into the hundreds of thousands, especially on m3post.com, which had 120 pages of comments as of Friday.

    Husker Auto Group and its personnel were bombarded with angry e-mails and posts, some of it the kind of name-calling that gets banned from some Web sites.

    Husker Auto denied ever balking at awarding the BMW and said Tanisaka had failed to execute steps to consummate his end of the deal.

    Early in the dust-up, Husker Auto’s lawyer Michael Maledon, posted statements that said Husker Auto allowed Tanisaka time to secure financing, and that he hadn’t made a required deposit in a timely way.

    “It is true that Husker asked Mr. Tanisaka to post a comment on this site that would set the record straight,” Maledon wrote. “While it may or may not have been Mr. Tanisaka’s intent, the dealership and its employees have been unfairly subject to slander, threats, intimidation, malicious tampering of personal property, harassment etc.”

    In any case, things got settled.

    “Being the honorable dealership that Husker is, they agreed to honor the price of $60,000 for the BMW E90 M3,” Husker Auto posted on its Web site this week. “This vehicle typically would have been priced around $70,000. At Husker BMW, we honor all contracts. And in this case we covered the $10,000 for the vehicle to make our customer happy.”

    Their lawyer was a little more blunt.

    “I hope you’ll consider doing a follow-up story which vindicates the dealership and highlights the ‘mob mentality’ of many Internet users who followed this story,” Maledon said in an e-mail.

    Tanisaka and his lawyer had asked outraged bloggers and chatters to lay off the dealer while they tried to settle details of an agreement.

    Tanisaka’s lawyer, Scott Teppers, posted: “While I believe Ken has acted maturely about this and has nothing to worry about, some of the posters here and the Board itself should look at many of the offensive posts that have gone up, particularly those using copyrighted photos from the Husker Auto Group site.”

    Some bloggers started figuring Tanisaka was taking advantage and counterposted accordingly.

    Husker Auto Group’s BMW manager Fil Catania could not be reached for comment Friday.

    Reach Richard Pier

« Older Comments