[tcmini]

After joining the MINI hunt around a month ago, I took delivery of my Indi Blue Cooper this past Sunday. I live in the San Francisco bay area where the interest in the MINI is extremely high. As you've likely read elsewhere on this board, this has allowed most of the dealers in the areas to sell Cooper with outrageous markups or "dealer extras". In the end, three of the four dealerships are charging $2000-3000 over list. When I started looking, it certainly didn't seem like I was going to be able to get a MINI a) any time soon, b) at a price that I'd feel good about.

Here's the good news: East Bay Mini (EBM) in Pleasanton is an incredible dealership. They're taking refundable deposits to put you on their list; this leads to an opportunity to spec a car just as soon as their allocation opens up. They're also charging MSRP for the car. They're also incredibly great to customers who stop in for a visit, and are more than happy to let you take a car our for a test drive.

A month ago, I put in my deposit, got a spot on the list and set out to wait until August or so for my car to be built and delivered. As I'm sure you can understand, the wait was killing me. Part of my obsession was periodically checking the in-stock section of the East Bay BMW website, which shows their current MINI inventory. You (I'm sure) can imagine my delight when the Cooper of my dreams showed up in their inventory system as a pre-spec. OK, so it didn't have the leather steering wheel, but then again, it's April, not August :-)

So, to make a long story longer, I gave them a call, told them I wanted the car. They put the bonnet stripes on for me, let them cure for 48 hours, and I picked the car up on Sunday. I paid MSRP and not a cent more. No pressure to add additional dealer options. Perfect.

A couple of other cool things: first, when I ordered the car a month ago the rep, Dan, indicated that EBM was "VIN etching" the glass in all their Coopers and that would add a $298 charge to the car over MSRP. When I stopped to pickup the car, Dan volunteered that the VIN fee was to cover extended insurance, not the etching itself and that I was free to decline the insurance coverage if I so choosed. I declined, the cashier said "no problem," and my Cooper was back to MSRP. Cool! Amazing customer service. And it gets better.

As we're going over the car "boot to bonnet" Dan notices that a particular dealer option has been installed in the car. Neither one of us knew it was there. I'd already paid for the car. I was ready to drive it off the lot. And here, in my car, is an option that I'd not paid for. What to do? Dan had a bunch of options: pressure me into paying for it, ask me to leave the car so they could remove it, ask me to bring back the car so they could remove it, etc. All of those choices would certainly have deminished my satisfaction with East Bay MINI -- I wanted my car now! I'd paid for it; I didn't want to wait another 24 hours and I certainly didn't want to be pressured into buying something I'd not asked for. So, Dan notices that it's there. Dan pauses for a second, and says "Congratulations. It's your car and looks like it has a little something you didn't ask for. Hope you like it." I do. I know this wasn't an easy choice. I'd bet this directly effected his commision. I'm sure he had a hard time explaining the situation to his GM. But you know what? In that second, Dan sealed me as an East Bay MINI/BMW customer for life, and as an evangalist for their dealership.

Attention bay area shoppers! Buy your MINI from East Bay MINI. They're absolute pros. And they really do have their customers' best interests in mind. Truely amazing. More on the car in another post...

Tom