Quote:
Originally Posted by bim_power
That is a positive news for those of us who are still waiting. I am surprised website was not updated to coincide with the production activities... in this day and age on technology.
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Track My BMW has always been very unreliable to the point that I wonder why they even keep it online without drastically overhauling the backend data source that feeds the application.
My car shows up as "Order Documented" and the image is still a Carbon Black X5 as opposed to Alpine White, which is what the order was changed to weeks ago.
It only displays vehicle-specific options/colors once Production Begins, which can be too late to spot any errors. Thankfully I double and triple-checked my vehicle detail printout from my CA and noticed my roof rails were ordered as satin aluminum and not gloss black. Had I not seen this, I would have not known and would've ended up rejecting delivery of the car.
I suspect (and hope!) my image will change once my car starts production and the site updates.
I do technology for a living and have been privileged to be part of some of the best app development teams around. It's not that hard to do a better job of this.
BMW *has* the data. There's no reason why they can't:
- update more frequently
- display a build date/week, even if it is subject to change
- display order configuration before it's too late
- display current status, like Body Shop, Paint Shop, etc.
- display shipping carrier/vessel name for vehicles coming to the US
- display estimated departure dates
- display estimated VPC processing times
- be honest about any delays
- etc., etc.
It's also funny that Track My BMW still has a step for "en route to the US" even though the car is built here. (I checked the source code though and in the JS script that runs the site, they do account for this - but not sure when/if it will change.)
I'm always partial to more data than less, and I can imagine BMW wanting to help their stores out by providing up-to-date information rather than having their CA's tied up tracking this stuff all the time. I know I annoy my CA and while he understands it, my calls keep him from other customers.
When I bought my Tesla over the summer, the Tesla Owner's Portal had all of this information (minus shipping) since their entire CRM is built on Salesforce/Force.com and they leverage the hundreds of APIs to pull this data.
There was also a time (and might still be true) where X3 owners could actually download a video of their car being built and going through assembly. I think that would be awesome for all cars, not just the X3. The whole assembly process is automated from a tracking and logistics perspective. Adding cameras wouldn't be hard.
What's sad is that some fellow enthusiasts and I who all worked in tech/ux/ui actually wireframed this concept and practically built it for BMW years ago and offered it to them free of charge, since we were constantly buying cars and dealing with the same thing. BMWNA were ecstatic and then it went nowhere. Oh well.