[Vintage]

PUMA is very bad. This is the system BMW put in place a few years back to control dealerships warranty work. It was designed, IMHO, to reduce warranty cost by not allowing your dealer to make the repair and warranty call for its customer. Think big government or big brother from BMW looking over the dealer's shoulder.

I learned all about PUMA with my wife's first e89. This is the short story. Car was wrecked in New Jersey port after shipment from our ED - then repaired, which is why delivery was delayed 4+ weeks from port. We receive it and were not told but we later discovered the problem. One of the indications was the adaptive suspension warning light kept coming on every time we drove the car. The sysmbol is a shock on your warning screen. So, we take it in to our dealer to be fixed and they simply "reset" the computer to make sure it is out of "shipment/transport mode." That did not work b/c within 5 miles from the dealer driving home the warning light comes back on - we take it back. Then it sits and sits at the dealer and they tell us the "suspension module/computer" and it hd to be ordered out of Germany. Finally fixed but driving it home the light came on again - not fixed. Then we take it back in - now it needs front shocks (you guessed it, from Germany). Car is finally fixed but guess what - driving home, the warning light comes on again. Yep, now the dealer says rear shocks.

At this point, I am more than pissed because from day one the service rep told me the car needed all new shocks. This is when I had a long talk with the Service Manager and the PUMA process/screwing was explained to me. Regardless, PUMA would not authorize the full shock replacement b/c BMW wanted to try to repair it in 3-4 stages to see what was the cheapest instead of taking care of the customer. The dealer was VERY upset to because they knew what would fix and literally were not allowed to by BMW and the almighty PUMA system.

The dealer has to diagnose the problem, submit it to PUMA, wait for PUMA to authorize or dictate the repair, then order the parts, then hope the cheapest proposed repair will fix your car. As I said, PUMA sucks as hard as possible.

That being said, thank you BMW NA for getting us a new 2010 e89 after much discussion. This one is unwrecked and behaving almost perfectly.