Car Shopping Made Easy!

A while back I used this space to veer decidedly from accounting and regaled you with adventures of perhaps my least favorite pursuit – car shopping.

In terms of pure enjoyment, I would rate shopping for my next automobile just slightly below a visit to a wax museum.

In other words, I’m not a fan.

But along the lines of “good things come to those who wait,” just this week I received an email declaring me the proud winner of a 2019 BMW Model 530i, metallic silver, 6-speed automatic transmission and equipped with a special cold weather package.

According to various websites, the vehicle MSRP on that model is roughly $55,000. Wow, I could not believe it, my first-ever luxury car! Providing you discount the 1969 Cadillac de Ville I was driving circa 1981.

And, apparently, I’ve also won a check for $1.5 million authorized by the British Gaming Board and the BMW Lottery Department. Odd, I wasn’t aware that BMW had a lottery department. But boy, does that fill a lot of financial potholes at Chez Carlino!

Now all I must do is email all my pertinent financial information to someone whose IP address ends with BMW@aol.com.

You see where I’m going with this right?

Yes, it belongs squarely in the same category with those emails from Nigerian royalty that you personally have millions in unclaimed funds just sitting in their country, but they need a good faith deposit in order to verify you are who you say you are.

Or someone from Mumbai – err, the IRS – threatening jail if you do not pay the thousands you somehow owe in unpaid taxes. As the end of tax season is roughly a month away, this scam should soon shift into overdrive.

But back to the car.

After a few trips online I found about 30 sites warning about the BMW scam, including one from the car manufacturer itself claiming it does not, nor ever has had, a lottery department.

Gee, glad we cleared that up.

I was a nanosecond away from forwarding my Social Security and checking account information. Well not really. But if it prevented me from hearing endless sales pitches at the dealership it was a nice 30-second fantasy.