Klein found out the hard way why people hate car dealerships.
Earlier yesterday on the H3 Podcast host Ethan Klein titled the livestream “Ethan’s Car Was Stolen” with a thumbnail of a wrecked Porsche. Viewers later found out that, as per usual, this was clickbait, that Klein’s car wasn’t literally stolen but, instead, found out Klein’s had his reserved BMW EV SUV sold from under him without his knowledge (hence, the “stolen” in the title.)
The stream’s posted below with that part of the show (1:31:40 already fast-forwarded to.
“We pre-ordered it (a BMW iX) a year ago,” Klein says. “It was a custom-made, spec’d out one, put the deposit and everything.”
“When I called the BMW dealership to follow up on the order, they said they already gave it away,” H3 co-host Lena explains. “They said that the car arrived, there was someone there at the dealership who wanted it and…they sold it.”
As Lena goes on to explain, Klein earlier admitted to the BMW dealership that they were waffling about whether to pull the trigger on it.
“There was that one point where you were kind of on the fence, you wanted to look at other electric cars…we were curious if we were to back out, what would happen, so, I guess the dealership just went with that.”
To add insult to injury the dealership tried to sell Klein a similar BMW iX, albeit this iX, of course, now comes with a $25,000 markup.
“They were like, this is a similar car except this one’s marked up $25,000. Mother ****er, I said he** no bro. Where’s the BMW CEO?”
Klein had reserved his BMW iX at MSRP (around $84,000.)
“As a Jewish man, I expect better from the Germans. Not f****** twice! This will never happen again, we said.”
To be fair, the BMW dealership DID refund Klein his $3,500 reservation fee (yet to hit his bank account.)
While upsetting to reservation holders, the practice of selling someone’s reserved car to someone willing to pay a bit more is not uncommon.
Since a reservation is just that, reserving a car before any financing terms have been finalized, dealerships can (and do) technically sell your reserved car to someone else.
“A deposit, just like a reservation, is a professional courtesy—there really is no pure obligation for a dealer to hold that car, just like you are not under any obligation to execute the purchase despite placing the deposit.”
While the new and used car market is showing signs of recovering from an inflation-induced supply chain shortage, those effects, lower prices and not-so-cut throat sales tactics, have yet to trickle down to the consumer.
As the car market sits right now, if you have a reservation and the car comes in, it would behoove you to snatch it up ASAP.
Otherwise, you suffer the same fate as Klein, having your reserved car gone before you can give it a test drive.
