Ahh… The wonders of the internet! Couple weeks back I surf over to maxbmw.com and order a long lists of odds and ends that I need to put the ST back together as well as less critical bits for the GS. Spend the better part of an hour typing in the order, go to checkout and input the credit card data, hit “return”- And the whole list disappears, replaced by a page telling me my credit card has been rejected. At this point, most sites give you an opportunity to correct your mistake, the better ones even make it easier by showing where you made your mistake. But not maxbmw.com- they just trash your whole shopping cart and make you start all over again. Complaint was duly registered with maxbmw.com, they replied, but didn’t fix a damn thing.

So I take the same order over to bobsbmw.com and enter it, no problems, even get a page telling me the order was accepted. Two weeks having passed with not even a communique from bobsbmw.com. never mind the actual parts, I send them an e-mail reminder. bobsbmw.com denies ever having received the order!

So surfing advrider.com today I note a post from an inmate describing the good experience he’d had with countrysidebmw.com or something like that. So I give it a try- shows promise- even tells you if the parts are in stock. So I put a bit over a hundred in parts in the cart, then try to buy some engine parts… The category won’t even load. I try again and again… Still won’t load.Even went and did e-mail and came back an hour later… still no engine parts page!

So I’m officially giving up on online BMW parts shopping, and BMW to for that matter- no point in buying a new one when the nearest dealers are 150 miles away. So tomorrow I’m going on a 400 mile parts run- first to ex-BMW dealer Judson 100 miles away to see if they’ve got anything I need still left in the bins, then to Moon 150 miles away in hopes of finding the rest.

Memo to BMW: This is not the way to sell motorcycles. Not that you gave a darn about us customers, anyway…

BTW, the comments feature doesn’t seem to be working, but I can be reached at gearheadgrrrl@gmail.com .