I ordered a new F10 BMW 530D on its launch date and took delivery early this summer. A couple of weeks after delivery, my wife picked up a puncture. She was able to drive the car home satisfactorily, and I took the car into my local BMW dealer (Stephen James Bromley) first thing the following morning. I had to wait nearly three hours for them to look at the puncture and I eventually had to leave the car with the dealer and go to work. They telephoned me later to say that they had no replacement tyre in stock, but would have one within 1-2 days. They then phoned me the following day, to say there were none in the country and it would 7-10 days to import the replacement tyre. I found this unacceptable on a new car and asked for a replacement car until the tyre was fitted, but none was available.

After I made a considerable fuss, the garage fitted a tyre from their demonstrator, which was duly swapped back once the replacement import arrived. Effectively this meant three garage visits for a puncture, and if I'd just accepted their explanation, I would have been without my (new) car for over a week. I've heard that BMW is having difficulty getting its French dealers to stock runflats as they are not original equipment in France, but it seems the same problem exists in the UK. I thought this was just a problem with the new 5 series, but a family friend has just experienced the same problem at the same dealer with a MINI. Do you have any insight as to what's going on here?