AlanJ said:
I don't think you need personally out me as being single handedly responsible for criticizing BMW dealers, there are many on here with the same view as me. I'm glad you have a good relationship with your dealer. I popped into Vines Guildford back in April. They did an OK job, diagnosing the O2 sensors took a long time. When I suggested that the O2 sensors were a common fault and might be worth checking first I got a response of "we're not aware of any known faults with O2 sensors on Z4M's, your symptoms could be caused any number of things we need to follow our diagnosis programme".
Fine it may sound like due diligence, but could have saved a lot of time and expense had they checked the O2 sensors immediately, they even tried to charge me for a new exhaust manifold at one point. It's not just BMW, I've had issues with Vauxhall main dealers too. I just personally have no faith in main dealers.
When I first went into Munich Legends they discussed potential issues that they would look for and mentioned all of the potential issues that S54's suffer from and some Z4M specific issues that they would check over. It just gives me confidence. You might get lucky and get the mechanic at BMW who has a passion for ///M cars, or Z4's in general, equally you may get the spotty apprentice working unsupervised on your P&J. It's a gamble unfortunately.
As for the bad rep of ML, I never dealt with the bad owners, but haven't seen anything negative about the new guys and only have positive experiences there.