I bought my '02 330ci in December. Great car and a very reasonable deal. The
dealer, Steve Thomas BMW, in Camarillo, CA, went out of their way to get me
into the car.

One problem arose. At the time of sale, the car had 2 new Bridgestone
Potenza RE 040's on the front and 2 rather worn Dunlop Pilot Sports on the
rear. M3 18" wheels all around. I asked the salesman what was up with that
and he had no answer. I assumed that the previous owner had bought the
fronts and then decided to trade it in.
   For whatever reason, I didn't check the tread wear as closely as I
should have. Mea culpa. A couple of days ago the right rear developed a slow
leak. I filled it and made a mental note to go and get new tires ASAP. By
that afternoon, the slow leak had become an audible fast leak. I thought I
had picked up a nail or some such. I parked the car and began changing the
tire. Imagine my consternation when I discovered the spare to be flat.
Imagine my further elevated heart rate when I hoofed the spare 2 miles to a
gas station that had air and discovered that the spare had a broken valve
stem.  :-O
   I called the outfit I had ordered the replacement Bridgstones from
earlier that day and asked if they could fix my spare. As they were getting
close to 600 bucks of my money the next day the answer was an obvious,
"Sure!". As a matter of fact, I should at this point reveal the fact that
American Tire treated me very well and are worthy of an attaboy of there
own.
   Called AAA and got the car, and spare, over to American Tire and they
quickly fixed the tire and got me on my way. I came back down the next
morning and had the new tires mounted. As the old tires were coming off, I
literally, could not believe my eyes. From the middle of the tire to the
inboard edge there was no tread left at all. The inboard edge was showing
cord and had actually separated from the carcass in several places around
the circumference of the tire. It was very bad. As I had recently taken the
car on a 500+ mile trip at speeds averaging around 80 to 85mph, you can
imagine my consternation. Turned out that the leak wasn't from a puncture
per se, but more from overall general failure. In other words, the tire
literally fell apart.
   I had already had an appointment to take the car in because of an issue
with the driver side window so I took the opportunity to show the boys at
BMW what they had allowed to drive off their lot. I asked them if the
condition of the tires was part of the Safety Inspection "process" that they
touted as being second to none in the used car industry. I was assured it
was and I then proceeded to haul out the old tire from the trunk, showing
them what had just been taken off the car they had sold me not 2 months, and
less than 2k miles, before. Things got really quiet. The service person
called the sales manager over and they were both, understandably red-faced.
I left the car and the tire with them and was told I would be called later
in the day about when the car would be ready.
   Turns out that the service manager had ordered two new tires for the car
to be installed prior to putting it up for sale. It had somehow slipped
through the cracks and got sold to me and got off the lot before the new
ones could be installed. That doesn't really answer my question to the sales
person I related earlier but as they then offered to pay me for the new
tires I had bought from American Tire, it really didn't matter.
   All-in-all, I'm happy that they were contrite and took care of this
situation as quickly as they did. I have had similar problems, with not so
desirable outcomes, with other dealers over the years and I must say that
these guys at Steve Thomas have been a cut above and showed that they can
admit a mistake and make it good.
   I am not sure if the above related story is considered "On Topic" or
not. If the group has a policy of not giving individual dealers either
praise or scorn, I am sorry. I just thought that the dealer did me a good
one and if anyone in the area was considering this particular dealer for
either purchase or service they would not, IMO, be making a bad decision,
based solely on my own experience, of course.

Jeff