[DrPartagas]

Have you used Penfed and received their BMW rebate? Share your experience dealing with Penfed, positive or negative.

I understand that one must be a member for 2 months prior to receiving the rebate coupon? Are you able to make an early payoff on your financing?

[bimmer_fast]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Have you used Penfed and received their BMW rebate? Share your experience dealing with Penfed, positive or negative.

I understand that one must be a member for 2 months prior to receiving the rebate coupon? Are you able to make an early payoff on your financing?

Talked to PenFed agents regarding the $3250, it will be a cash out offer (a finance service other than BMWFS) or $500 with BMWFS. I am not sure about BMWFS, you can always pay off within the Finance Service you selected

[Jpflo]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Have you used Penfed and received their BMW rebate? Share your experience dealing with Penfed, positive or negative.

I understand that one must be a member for 2 months prior to receiving the rebate coupon? Are you able to make an early payoff on your financing?

Yes. I am a member. Very positive experience. Simply printed out the certificate, brought the offer code to my dealer when I picked up the vehicle and they gave me a $3250 rebate off the purchase price.

I financed through PenFed as well. No prepayment penalty. The rebate cannot be used if you finance through BMW. That didn't matter to me as PenFed offered a better rate.

They did let me know that the PenFed offer cancels out the BMW loyalty rebate of 1k. You can't do both.

[taek]

Mine was easy but other posters have had issues, seems to be dealer specific. My dealer accepted the printed documentation w/ my code on it no problems, and considered it $3250 in payment.

Are you able to make an early payoff on your financing?

Financing has nothing to do with the incentive. You can pay in cash and get the incentive.

[DrPartagas]

Is their a list of participating BMW dealers? I live and would buy in Pennsylvania?

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Is their a list of participating BMW dealers? I live and would buy in Pennsylvania?

All BMW dealers must accept/participate in the Domestic Military discount. The certificate says to bring to any BMW dealer.

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by taek

Financing has nothing to do with the incentive. You can pay in cash and get the incentive.

This is not accurate/complete, financing definitely can effect the incentive. If you finance with BMWFS it drops to $500.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Have you used Penfed and received their BMW rebate? Share your experience dealing with Penfed, positive or negative.

I understand that one must be a member for 2 months prior to receiving the rebate coupon? Are you able to make an early payoff on your financing?

There are literally hundreds of posts on this so you may want to search for "Penfed". That said:

(1.) Yup, one must be a PenFed member for 60+ days (see bonus below if you're a veteran / active duty)

(2.) Go on the website, print out your form (electronically & physically)

(3.) Tell you BMW Salesperson you'd like to use a PenFed incentive while you're negotiating your deal - some dealers won't accept it these days despite the fact they should.

(4.) At deal-close & paperwork time, present the certificate to get a reworked "dealsheet" that has all of your numbers on it (MSRP, discounts, options, incentives, tax, fees, etc)

(5.) Some details apply: e.g., some models aren't included like the X5/6M Comp package. Non-comp X5/6M works for $3250 (w/o BMWFS financing) or $500 (w BMWFS financing), but for comps there's no incentive.

If you're getting an X5/6 and financing outside of BMWFS or paying cash it's the easiest $3250 ever.

BONUS NOTE #1:
If you were wondering, no reason to get hung up on the "military incentive" terminology - that's legacy BMW bureaucratic administrivia; anyone is eligible for the PenFed incentive as long as you're a PenFed member for 60 days+ at the time of the deal signing. The BMW benefit to veterans & active duty is they're eligible immediately, no 60 days.

PenFed administers this same non-military incentive for many brands, not just BMW:



BONUS NOTE #2:
As noted above, documentation updates of this incentive moves at bureaucratic speeds, so it's likely you may see outdated things in the wording. For example, the website documentation wasn't updated for 2022 models until late October 2021 despite the 2022s being out for months and many forum members having their 2022 incentives processed on the old paper that said 2021.

[bimmer_fast]

Originally Posted by taek

Mine was easy but other posters have had issues, seems to be dealer specific. My dealer accepted the printed documentation w/ my code on it no problems, and considered it $3250 in payment.


Financing has nothing to do with the incentive. You can pay in cash and get the incentive.

Did you show the certificate at order time or delivery time? Will they lock the 3250 at order time even if the built takes several months?

[Jpflo]

Originally Posted by bimmer_fast

Did you show the certificate at order time or delivery time? Will they lock the 3250 at order time even if the built takes several months?

You show it at delivery time.

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by bimmer_fast

Did you show the certificate at order time or delivery time? Will they lock the 3250 at order time even if the built takes several months?

there's no "lock" - it's an incentive provided by BMW & PenFed that's processed when money changes hands. It's basically a coupon code - the store doesn't process it until you pay.

best practice is to tell your dealer at order time you'd like to use the PenFed incentive to ensure they don't give you any problems accepting it when it comes time to sign the paperwork at the dealership (i.e., when you pay for the car, take care of license, taxes, etc - note this might be different from "delivery" time)

[bimmer_fast]

Originally Posted by GrussGott

there's no "lock" - it's an incentive provided by BMW & PenFed that's processed when money changes hands. It's basically a coupon code - the store doesn't process it until you pay.

best practice is to tell your dealer at order time you'd like to use the PenFed incentive to ensure they don't give you any problems accepting it when it comes time to sign the paperwork at the dealership (i.e., when you pay for the car, take care of license, taxes, etc - note this might be different from "delivery" time)

Thank you. I might not be able to provide as my delivery will be like 2 weeks earlier than the 60th day of PenFed membership, the dealer strongly said no wait time for me. I have to pay it at delivery. I am thinking of a new order after they told me that

[Gstahl]

One more note... Using the exact legal name on all documents will help. I am a vet and used the BMW veterans discount directly, and they could not find it until I re-did it with my legal name. Same if using trucar veterans discount.

[Rock2022]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Have you used Penfed and received their BMW rebate? Share your experience dealing with Penfed, positive or negative.

I understand that one must be a member for 2 months prior to receiving the rebate coupon? Are you able to make an early payoff on your financing?

Have been here for a couple months and always seen same answers. Hope my different experience is helpful.

Contacted penfed and truecar: must be used at a truecar certified dealer. The statement on the coupon does not have any restrictions to any dealer. Military discount is different.

I am in a small city. The only BMW dealer (not a truecar certified dealer) never heard it before. They called BMW finance department and got the same NO answer. I can still use military discount, but I am not. I got $500 from BMW, $1000 from dealer (due to the deletion of touchscreen) and $1000 from my wife's graduation.

One dealer in the nearby city never heard of penfed discount before, either. Another dealer in another nearby city confirmed they can use, but I don't want to wait for two more months.

Still picked it up last week and like it.

[DrPartagas]

Is there anywhere to locate a list of TruCar's certified dealers?

[Rock2022]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Is there anywhere to locate a list of TruCar's certified dealers?

https://penfed.truecar.com

Go through and it will show up based on your zip code

[GrussGott]

Originally Posted by DrPartagas

Is there anywhere to locate a list of TruCar's certified dealers?

Yeah, this is why it's best to ask the dealer if they accept PenFed at deal time. Any dealer's finance department that knows how and is willing to submit for the incentive is eligible, but:

* Some dealers just don't want the hassle so refuse
* Some dealers have never done it / are too small
* Some dealers get frustrated with all the rebates, incentives, & stacking bureaucracy

And in this environment, there's just not a lot of leverage to pressure any dealer into doing it - they'll just say no.

[MadameLV85]

Easy experience. Got my Penfed cert# and got financing through my other credit union to get the full $3250. I will note that I was one of the last sales at that dealership to be allowed to do outside financing. I wonder if the rebate ha anything to do with that.

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by Rock2022

Have been here for a couple months and always seen same answers. Hope my different experience is helpful.

Contacted penfed and truecar: must be used at a truecar certified dealer. The statement on the coupon does not have any restrictions to any dealer. Military discount is different.

I am in a small city. The only BMW dealer (not a truecar certified dealer) never heard it before. They called BMW finance department and got the same NO answer. I can still use military discount, but I am not. I got $500 from BMW, $1000 from dealer (due to the deletion of touchscreen) and $1000 from my wife's graduation.

One dealer in the nearby city never heard of penfed discount before, either. Another dealer in another nearby city confirmed they can use, but I don't want to wait for two more months.

Still picked it up last week and like it.

This is not correct at all. There is no need for the dealer to be associated with TrueCar in order to accept the incentive. The incentive offered through PenFed is BMW's domestic military incentive and is accepted at all BMW dealers.

Do not refer to it as the PenFed incentive since there is no such thing and it confuses dealers who are not up to speed on all of the ways that the domestic military incentive can be obtained. Going through PenFed is just one way to get the domestic military incentive along with using ID.me at TrueCar and BMW's site.

[Rock2022]

Originally Posted by TurtleBoy

This is not correct at all. There is no need for the dealer to be associated with TrueCar in order to accept the incentive. The incentive offered through PenFed is BMW's domestic military incentive and is accepted at all BMW dealers.

Do not refer to it as the PenFed incentive since there is no such thing and it confuses dealers who are not up to speed on all of the ways that the domestic military incentive can be obtained. Going through PenFed is just one way to get the domestic military incentive along with using ID.me at TrueCar and BMW's site.

You and another ID like argument very much, as long as people have different options/experience.

Basically you are right, truecar and penfed and BMW finance are all wrong.

I will just stop discussion here.

[TurtleBoy]

Originally Posted by Rock2022

You and another ID like argument very much, as long as people have different options/experience.

Basically you are right, truecar and penfed and BMW finance are all wrong.

I will just stop discussion here.

Depending on what was said they may be wrong. More than likely though it was a misunderstanding on your part as well as others not being familiar with all of the programs and not taking the time to research them properly.

[DrPartagas]

I've been getting emails from Penfed/Trucar NJ certified dealers. 6-7-8% above MSRP