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Yeah, total waste of time marketing on a site with over 300 million users worldwide and now over 2.5mill in NZ. Much better off in the Te Kuiti Bugle. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I once saw an NZ new E90 330 touring in manual at Team. Cool story bro.

Ray @ Hellbm will have one. Ring him

Do you mean underrated? Sent from my GT-I8160L using Tapatalk 2

You can get in touch with Ray, forum sponsor want to buy section Hellbm Brent bmworld.co.nz

economics isnt quite that simple. or sinister. lets look at exchange rates. 5 years ago 100USD = $198NZD today 100USD = $117NZD see where the discount is coming from? Buying with foreign currency in the us is now great unfortunately buying with USD is now terrible because its not worth anything. SO you might think hey who cares we dont live in the US so we dont buy in with their money, problem is many countries like china will only accept payment in USD as their currency is to unsteady. so anything we own that comes out of countries like china or india or south America have gone up in price massively. That would be ok but guess where the factory is getting alot of their OEM parts from now days? bearings, rubber, glass, plastics. alot are asian even on high class cars. local costs more than foreign but both are a sh*t load cheaper than they were a decade ago. And again economics of scale. if you are buying brake pads that every car goes through reguarly then its likely that repco or supercheap will do tem at a good price. if you want a thermostat housing or similar that isnt common then dont expect them to have a great price. #1 complaint about euro parts in big stores is "why dont you carry stock"??? answer. someone suggests an item. big company has 70 stores, decent stock levels dictate two per store as the restock time is 3 months. So you have to buy 140 units. 140 units might cost you $6 each. add your freight and overheads. $14 each.total outlay $2359 add Margin $19 each. Add gst $21.85 each sale price good business dictates that you should sell cost price worth of goods every 12 months at the absolute minimum. so you must sell 108 units every year for it to make economic sense. and you still havent turned a profit. full profit of you sell them all? $700 VS online supplier. Buying 500 units. $4 each. Has their own container so freight per item is possibly $0.05, overheads are for a single warehouse vs 70 stores so maybe $0.20 each. outlay $2125. Sell price is $17 . to break even in 12 months 125. full profit if all sold? $6375 So each will have to sell similar amount of stock to break even. both taking similar risk but one is earning almost 10X what the other. And then theres the target market. bmw usa sold 347,000 new cars in 2012 bmw NZ sold 1646 new cars in 2012. and if you want to include it 2180 bmw imports in 2012. and then people say but why dont you keep this little part i need. even the dealerships dont bother anymore. If the consumer insists on buying cheaply overseas, they have to recognise that they are getting a discount in exchange for. . no consumer guarantees act. . no same day supply. . no face to face knowledgable service (i.e. no one to say you might actually need a different part from what you are ordering.) . no warrenties if the part fails (many overseas will exchnage it but you have to pay $50 to send it back on a $30 part, plus another month wait) . expect the gst threashold to come way down (aus is already dropping theirs to $50) . expect our tax dollars to pay for the $10 of labour it takes to enforce a $2 gst charge . and most importantly if the exchange rate goes back up and the online price doubles what happens if the little nz retailer has gone bust in the mean time. its the same story everywhere. feel free to go into the "ray from hell bm is amazing" thread and explain how the guys at the local polytech charge less, see how that goes. its apples and oranges. every purchase buys you a range of things, try not to focus on the physical ones.

First you need to confirm the type of bulb you need. In NZ P21 (clear) or PY21 (amber bulb) are common bayonet fittings but have different internal codings so you cant accidetally use the wrong bulb. Then there is the bulb socket to housing coding which is sometimes different to stop you putting a stop bulb in an indicator lamp etc, etc. The bulb socket you linked on ebay looks to be a P21W (wedge base). It is a genuine Hella part, but it is common to have different bulbs for different markets - & that sellier looks to be american. Suggest talking to Ray or Brent for a spare from a wrecked car.