Dealer offer for newer CPO BMW is it serious or a joke ?

[JGGM]

KBB is useless anyway. Their "values" mean nothing. Banks don't lend on KBB, 99% of them lend on NADA. I do think it's odd that they'd waste money on sending out low offers considering the used car market is really tight right now. Inventories across the country are insanely low.

I spent about $20k at my dealership this month marketing to our past customers for their trade-in...and the people who have traded off that marketing got top-market money, because we need inventory and I need my marketing money to be money well spent.

To put the current market into perspective: 2 year old domestic brand SUVs with average miles are selling for retail at the big auctions. Dealers are literally paying retail for vehicles, plus auction fees, plus transportation fees, plus reconditioning fees just to have inventory. Retail values are rising, book values are rising. I've never seen anything like it in the industry. Long story short: if you have a nice used car to trade in - shop around and get the money for your car. 

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[Horseshoez]

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@Gladius wrote:

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@Horseshoez wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Horseshoez wrote:

It isn't just BMW dealerships which play this game, I've gotten similar ultra-lowball offers from Chrysler, Mazda, BMW, and Honda.  Pretty silly when you think about it.  I wonder if this marketing gimmick ever yields a positive result for both the dealership and the car owner.

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For the owner, no... For the dealer, potentially yes. They hire a marketing company that creates these letters for next to nothing for every customer in their system. A few will come in and may purchase a vehicle, they usually don't trade or at least don't accept the low ball offers. When I worked at a dealership we had a customer come in on one of these mailers and sold us their car for less than half of it's actual value... I am just glad I wasn't involved in that deal. 

One thing to note, these offers typically don't take into account the specific options or trim of your vehicle and they use an average mileage for similar vehicles, which is probably pretty high for 8 year old BMW 5 series vehicles.

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Hmmm, the three BMW dealerships I've worked with have been pretty upstanding, even to the point of taking a look at my soon to be off lease 5-Speed 2002 530i PP, SP, Xenon, Premium Audio, and offering me thousands (literally) above the residual of the car to trade it in with them, even though they weren't the selling dealer.  

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You're leasing a car that's almost 20 years old or is this a typo?

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Neither.  I was relating an incident which happened back in 2005 to illustrate the upstanding nature of the BMW dealerships I've worked with; nothing more, nothing less.