[WDE82]

Originally Posted by StuKatz

when shopping for wife's new car last Fall, these type of posts dissuaded us from buying anything with the 2.0 turbo, precisely because of the timing chain issue.

bought at 2012 E91 with the N52. Last model to have the NA engine. couldn't be happier with it!

That title goes to the 2013 E82

[TravelingLight]

Any idea why the claim form for eligible past expenses says it must be postmarked "on or within 30 days of the Effective Date..."? I thought we had a year from the settlement date? I know it can go beyond a year, but I'm ready to submit mine now, which is still within the year. Thanks.

[sjbender]

Long time no post, hope everyone is doing well. I just looked over the PACER website and have noticed some people are writing letters to the judge explaining that their claims are not being addressed. The judge has ordered RUST and BMW to address their concerns directly. This may be the route you will need to take to get action.

I had to contact a lawyer to resolve my Jeep Ecodiesel claim two years ago otherwise it would have sat forever.

Full docket text for document 184:
TEXT ORDER: Plaintiffs counsel is directed to address the letter filed by class member Ebner (ECF No. 183).. So Ordered by Magistrate Judge Cathy L. Waldor on 1/5/22. (tjg, )

Good luck!

http://www.sjbender.com/letter.pdf

[SandMender]

Has anyone actually received their timing chain settlement? In October I received a request for clarification regarding the names on my receipts. I provided that in November but since then I have heard nothing.

[bavarianride]

I talked to a SA at a local dealer, and he said BMW approved several N20/N26 claims under the TC settlements, but those customers did not want to pay $2k-$3k per settlement terms, and instead sold the cars without fixing.

Apparently this cohort didn't have immediate failure, but their TC's did not pass some kind of test(no elaboration from SA). They sold to carfax/carvana/etc-etc at current FMVs without much haircuts.

[chrisca70]

Just got this e-mail from Gelis/Rust:
-----------------
Dear Claimant:

We are writing to inform you that Rust Consulting is continuing to review and process claims. If you did not receive a letter from us requesting additional documentation, your claim was preliminary reviewed and is being finally validated by BMW per the terms of the Settlement Agreement. If you have sent emails to Rust Consulting, please know that they are being reviewed and will be responded to as soon as we have a meaningful update to share.

If you received a deficiency letter from us requesting additional documentation and you have timely provided the documents that were requested, Rust Consulting is reviewing your submission to determine if the requested information is sufficient to further validate your claim. If the additional documentation does not cure the deficiency, we will later advise you in writing that the claim has been denied. If you did not hear from us after submitting that additional documentation, that means your claim was conditionally approved and is being validated further.

If your claim is approved and fully validated, we will advise you in writing of that approval and the amount approved. If your claim is denied, we will advise you of that in writing, as well as your right to appeal.

We appreciate your patience as we review the significant number of claims submitted. Please continue to monitor the website for updates as well.

Rust Consulting
-----------------------------------

[dave14x28]

I just got that letter too. After seeing sjbenders recent post, I had inquired on the status of my claim, after having filed almost a year ago and provided further documentation as requested this past fall. Betting the letter is in response to the court's action, not my inquiry.

[TravelingLight]

Originally Posted by chrisca70

Just got this e-mail from Gelis/Rust:
-----------------
Dear Claimant:

We are writing to inform you that Rust Consulting is continuing to review and process claims. If you did not receive a letter from us requesting additional documentation, your claim was preliminary reviewed and is being finally validated by BMW per the terms of the Settlement Agreement. If you have sent emails to Rust Consulting, please know that they are being reviewed and will be responded to as soon as we have a meaningful update to share.

If you received a deficiency letter from us requesting additional documentation and you have timely provided the documents that were requested, Rust Consulting is reviewing your submission to determine if the requested information is sufficient to further validate your claim. If the additional documentation does not cure the deficiency, we will later advise you in writing that the claim has been denied. If you did not hear from us after submitting that additional documentation, that means your claim was conditionally approved and is being validated further.

If your claim is approved and fully validated, we will advise you in writing of that approval and the amount approved. If your claim is denied, we will advise you of that in writing, as well as your right to appeal.

We appreciate your patience as we review the significant number of claims submitted. Please continue to monitor the website for updates as well.

Rust Consulting
-----------------------------------

How long ago did you submit your claim?

[SandMender]

It's been a year since most submitted their claims. Mine was submitted in Feb 21, I received a request for more info in Oct 21, replied and this is the first info since. I received the same email.

[MAIV3412]

Originally Posted by Bmac850

I have 2013 BMW 328I xdrive with 82000 miles on it. It quit running. My independent mechanic tells the engine is toast. Called the BMW dealer that I bought it from used with 40000 miles on it. They pretty much said tough luck. Then I called BMW NA. They sounded like the wanted to help in some way but could not guarantee anything until officially diagnosed by BMW dealer. Since the original dealer is 80 miles away...I had it towed to a local BMW dealer. Then I started doing a ton of research. Apparently, this engine failure could not be avoided by me in any way. Meaning it was going to fail no matter how I treated the car. Obviously, there was the 70,000-mile recall. BMW knew that most of these engines would blow after 70,000 miles. I did some more internet digging...and guess what. There is a huge class-action lawsuit going on! I have spoken with 2 lawyers involved in that lawsuit. They both think BMW is going to settle in the next 30 days or so. Most likely with another extended warranty. I am beyond pissed off at this point. It's my wife's car. Even if BMW were to fix the motor free of charge....I don't think she wants it back. The bad news is that we still owe $14000 dollars on it....yuck! If anyone would like more info...hit me up..I have a good amount of it!

do you know specifically what happened in the engine? I am going through the same thing with my 2015 328i at 68000 miles.

[myownreality]

PErsonally I would avoid taking my car to a dealership, practically ever. I have a chrysler I bought with 46k miles, had a bunch of free oil changes and services left on it, but already had CEL because of a faultycrank sensor, which the dealer wanted several hundred dollars to fix. I was instead able to buy a replacement for under 100$, took about 2 hours to pull all the shit on top of it out of the way but was finally able to get there and replace it.

Here's the thing: dealerships don't get squat for all the free services that are promised to come along with the car, or for fixing warranty issues, so they tend to cut costs anywhere they can on this. They typically will not use the highest quality oils or filters when replacing these and will rack up the costs as much as possible every time you take it in. I've known some mechanics that have worked at various dealerships, that have said they low key either ignore little not specified basic maintenance, or down right intentionally do things that will cause a non-safety related part to fail down the road.

Finally when it comes to issues like this of complete failures of major components, dealerships will invariable figure out how to charge the maximum amount of money possible to fix the situation, reason being is either you will shell out the high tax to fix the issue, or even better in their opinion: you'll accept a shit ass trade in offer or abandon the vehicle all together, which they can then fix in the least expensive manner possible and then resell it to somebody else. BMW dealerships are notorious for this as are Mercedes dealerships. Reason being that their parts are a fair bit more exclusive to get than other vehicles, and their diagnostic software is less common as the cars are less common. Furthermore your average BMW or Mercedes driver is the perfect kinda mark for these practices - high income, status symbol seeking, and mechanically illiterate.

I second what somebody else has already said about finding an independent shop. I would look for one that specializes in European cars, and check on google, yelp, and yellowpages.com to see what their ratings look like, you want a shop with ratings in the hundreds, this shows you that there are a lot of customers, furthermore they should have 4/5* ratings or better, finally I would actually read the comments specifically the 2* and 5* comments, 1*'s can be ignored as this is frequently bot generated noise from competitors and folks who simply cannot be satisfied, 2* is where you find most of your legitimate complaints lodged by reasonable customers, and a good shop will have replies to these comments, what you're looking to see is mostly customers who are primarily unhappy with their situation which is of no fault of the mechanic. As far as 5*'s you generally wanna glance through and see how many leave comments, and generally what kinda profile these reviewers have, are they accredited by the platform as local guides? Do they seem like the kind of names that real people might have? OR is it mostly bot generated traffic from an online presence management firm? Legit reviews will generally have a story like theme to them, or list the vehicles the reviewer has brought in, and the gold star is if you see qualifying reviewers that say shit like "Take your car to them, and trust them enough to go with what they recommend. Other things to look for are statements to the effect of how much money they saved vs the dealership.

If you live in a major metropolitan area there is a pretty solid chance you can find at least one reliable shop. I would recommend calling them explaining your issue and asking for a ballpark estimate / range with regards to the same service that the dealership was recommending if the difference is worth it, I imagine the couple hundred bucks it might cost to have it towed from the dealership to their shop would probably be worth it; esp considering the substantial sum you said you still owe.

[thejeremyman9]

Originally Posted by myownreality

Here's the thing: dealerships don't get squat for all the free services that are promised to come along with the car, or for fixing warranty issues, so they tend to cut costs anywhere they can on this.

What? Dealerships get paid by the OEM for warranty work...

[myownreality]

Originally Posted by thejeremyman9

What? Dealerships get paid by the OEM for warranty work...

They get costs covered, so man hours and parts, not their markup, essentially they're covering the rent for that X amount of hours your car is being worked on, but not making any profit.

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by myownreality

They get costs covered, so man hours and parts, not their markup, essentially they're covering the rent for that X amount of hours your car is being worked on, but not making any profit.

Usually dealers can charge hours per job as specified by BMWNA, and hourly labor rate at my local dealer is actually more than retail rate.

The parts are provided by BMWNA, and dealers can charge wholesale prices.

Dealers love to do warranty work as they get BMWNA's warranty labor rate($$$$$) and fill up work hours for technicians, but technicians at times complain specified hours (e.g. 15 hours per N20/N26 timing chain job) are not enough.

[myownreality]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Usually dealers can charge hours per job as specified by BMWNA, and hourly labor rate at my local dealer is actually more than retail rate.

The parts are provided by BMWNA, and dealers can charge wholesale prices.

Dealers love to do warranty work as they get BMWNA's warranty labor rate($$$$$) and fill up work hours for technicians, but technicians at times complain specified hours (e.g. 15 hours per N20/N26 timing chain job) are not enough.

If what you're saying is true than I imagine your local dealership must go out of it's way not to let warranties be voided by any one of the number of things that can do that; I mean it would only make sense seeing as how it's their guys who are there inspecting the vehicle and all. I mean if BMW is paying more for their warranty work than the standard retail rate they should be trying to make sure everything that could conceivably fall under warranty does so, as that would be in the dealerships best interest if as you stated the dealership gets paid more for warranty work than they charge for retail work, which for BMW is generally somewhere between 130-150$ per hour in the US. Nevermind the fact that dealerships are paying their mechanics perhaps $50 per hour tops and $20 per hour being the average, at least according to glassdoor.com. How ever you slice it per your info BMW treats it's dealers amazingly, they must not allow a whole lot of markup in the sales process then. IT's crazy that BMW per your information has this entirely different business model with regards to service work than every other auto manufacturer selling cars in the US market; at least to my knowledge.

Also you said something about charging wholesale, which doesn't make a ton of sense, if BMWNA is providing the parts, and it's a warranty job which shouldn't cost anything, who is the dealership supposed to be charging here?

[bavarianride]

One example from local SA is that retail labor is around $210/hr, while the rate for N20/N26 TC job is $215/hr(those numbers were from a year ago).

That $215/hr is used to compute labor rate for the job, e.g. $215 * 20 hrs(e.g.) = $4300 labor only.

I don't know the exact number of hours my dealer negotiated to for N20/N26 TC job, I do read from bmwtechinician that BMWNA only pays his dealer 15 hours for same job.

The retail labor hours for the same job in my dealer is more than 20 hrs(e.g. 25 hrs).

BMWNA also has a fixed, wholesale price, for the N20/N26 TC kit, say, $1k(or less if u use fcpeuro's number), and dealer uses that number to compute labor + parts costs which is around $6000 with tax + shop fees. Obviously retail with markup for the same kit usually is more than $1k.

Per N20/N26 TC settlement, that final number determines out-of-pocket costs for customers and BMWNA, assuming the repair is covered.

The subtle point here is that when BMWNA needs to pay a % of the cost, BMNWA do negotiate to lower labor + parts cost. If BMWNA is not involved, dealer charges whatever they like on labor + parts to retail customers.

This applies to all warranty work + value added service, e.g. retail everyday low price vs. valued added price for oil changes.

Originally Posted by myownreality

If what you're saying is true than I imagine your local dealership must go out of it's way not to let warranties be voided by any one of the number of things that can do that; I mean it would only make sense seeing as how it's their guys who are there inspecting the vehicle and all. I mean if BMW is paying more for their warranty work than the standard retail rate they should be trying to make sure everything that could conceivably fall under warranty does so, as that would be in the dealerships best interest if as you stated the dealership gets paid more for warranty work than they charge for retail work, which for BMW is generally somewhere between 130-150$ per hour in the US. Nevermind the fact that dealerships are paying their mechanics perhaps $50 per hour tops and $20 per hour being the average, at least according to glassdoor.com. How ever you slice it per your info BMW treats it's dealers amazingly, they must not allow a whole lot of markup in the sales process then. IT's crazy that BMW per your information has this entirely different business model with regards to service work than every other auto manufacturer selling cars in the US market; at least to my knowledge.

Also you said something about charging wholesale, which doesn't make a ton of sense, if BMWNA is providing the parts, and it's a warranty job which shouldn't cost anything, who is the dealership supposed to be charging here?

[Palantir]

Just got my reimbursement check in the mail today...after more than 1 year wait time...Hope everyone who submitted their claim gets a satisfactory resolution, now that we know BMW started paying...

[merdock]

I too received my check from the settlement. Glad to put this all to rest after 1+ years of waiting.

[TravelingLight]

Finally got a reply from Gelis on my email after submitting my claim:

Thank you for your email. The deadline to submit a Claim for reimbursement was June 30, 2021. We are no longer accepting Claims for reimbursement in this Settlement. We have reached out to our internal BMW NA contact and asked them to have the dealer contact you regarding your repairs.

For general information about the Settlement, please visit the Settlement website, www.TimingChainModuleSettlement.com. You may also send questions to the Claims Administrator at: Gelis Claims Administrator - 7080, c/o Rust Consulting, PO Box 14, Minneapolis, MN 55440-0014.

Sincerely,

Gelis Claims Administrator

So I replied to them to remind them that per the Final Approval of Settlement (filed 2/16/21), claims for repairs are covered for one (1) year following the effective date of settlement, and my claims was submitted within this time period (delivered by mail to Gelis on 1/28/22).

ETA:
They responded back saying "The Prospective Repair Program does not provide reimbursement for repairs. That portion of the Settlement is handled by BMW NA, not by the Claims Administrator." So now I've got to call BMW NA back after they told me to submit to Gelis in the first place.

[Spyder3]

I would like to get advice from the experts on this forum regarding preventative replacement of the timing chain, tensioner, oil pump, etc. I will be gifting a 2013 F30 N20 with 65K miles to one of my children, and would like the peace of mind knowing they are unlikely to experience an unexpected engine failure.

I'm going to call around to local independent shops for estimates. What exactly should I request? Looking for list of components part numbers for everything that should be replaced to do the job right. (I've been following this thread forever, and realize the info is somewhere in these dozens of pages and hundreds of posts, but I cannot easily find it). I hope someone can spare time and share info from a successful replacement job.

Thank you!

[merdock]

The repair/parts are from technical service bulletin: SI B11 03 17

[Spyder3]

Originally Posted by merdock

The repair/parts are from technical service bulletin: SI B11 03 17

Thank you very kindly for providing this TSB info. Looks like exactly what I need.