Attn Aussies: Hooray for BMA!

[Trevor]

Thanks to Stacey Anton for putting me on to BMA.
Local BMW parts dealer was going to charge me AUD$250+ for a new distributor cap and rotor.
After contacting Patrick at BMA I had them shipped out air freight last Wednesday and the package arrived this morning (monday). Not a bad result.
Total cost including air freight was AUD$120

I wish I'd known about international shipping from BMA before as I would have saved about $1000 on my front end rebuild.

Give them a go.

catalog.bmaparts.com

[genphreak]

Thanks to Stacey Anton for putting me on to BMA. Give them a go.

I use www.eap4parts.com, however www.usps.com have all the frieght rates online by weight and destination, so I have no problems getting things sent from anywhere in the US, execpt when our poor US cousins who suffer that strange paranoia about being checked/suspected for terrorist activites whenever they fill out a customs form nowadays... :( its such a sad state of affairs! :) GP

[pundit]

Thanks to Stacey Anton for putting me on to BMA.
Local BMW parts dealer was going to charge me AUD$250+ for a new distributor cap and rotor.
After contacting Patrick at BMA I had them shipped out air freight last Wednesday and the package arrived this morning (monday). Not a bad result.
Total cost including air freight was AUD$120

I wish I'd known about international shipping from BMA before as I would have saved about $1000 on my front end rebuild.

Give them a go.

catalog.bmaparts.com
I'm thinking of the same thing next time I have to buy parts for mine. It just shows how much we get ripped out here when you can import parts yourself including all the shipping costs for half the price of the stealers.

[Kalevera]

Does anyone know why parts cost so much in AUS?

I've been thinking about starting a business to do just that (import parts), but my suspicion is that there's some huge import tariff.

best, whit

[Trevor]

The killer for parts is generally the storage and handling costs.
Keeping parts in stock costs money. Even if they have to order it in they need to recoup the overall costs.
A good comparison is the 3%-5% retailers add to all prices to cover fees. You still pay the sasme price generally for cash (unless you haggle).

I know that for the future all my non-time critical parts will be coming from BMA etc.

[BigKriss]

why does it take so long for BMW Australia to import parts from overseas like Germany? I recently broke the subframe bolt. car out of action.

I gave Sylvania BMW (NSW) a call. They wanted aus$60 for the the two bolts and two nuts. I would take three to four weeks from germany. BMA was around aus$20 and took 9 days from to receive the part after I broke it.

I think it's a joke. Here's another story - no ******** - I was talking today to a gentlman whos owns a BMW e39 M5, he is having trouble with his car, above 5000 rpms, the engine cuts out. Recommendations from BMW Canberra, told him he needed two new catalyitc converters, don't worry - he only paid aus$4000 each.

[pundit]

... Here's another story - no ******** - I was talking today to a gentlman whos owns a BMW e39 M5, he is having trouble with his car, above 5000 rpms, the engine cuts out. Recommendations from BMW Canberra, told him he needed two new catalyitc converters, don't worry - he only paid aus$4000 each.
Yeah, but did it fix it or did it turn out to be a $6.00 relay??

[BigKriss]

the car was still ****ed. "they fixed the symptom and not the cause".

[pundit]

the car was still ****ed. "they fixed the symptom and not the cause".
So they refunded his 8 grand then? ;)
Or will they just wait until the cats screw up again and slug him another 8 grand? Why fix the cause when you can keep charging to fix the symptom?

[BigKriss]

my thoughts exactly, some people have more $ then sense.