We've had a letter from a HUGE firm of solicitors (or somebody claiming to be solicitors - you never know nowadays what with so much real criminal activity on the internet) claiming to be acting for BMW. They think we are attempting to commit the heinous crime of "passing off" [sic]. Now you all know who BMW are don't you? To remind you, they are a large, very rich, company that manufactures very nice motor cars in Southern Germany and Birmingham and possibly Goodwood. They also (under previous management) manufactured the engines in the high performance Focke Wulf FW190 for a certain Mr. Hilter , some pretty green tracked vehicles and some rather wizzo aircraft engines during the 1914/18 argument. It was Baron von Richthofen, the "Red Baron", who praised the BMW engines that powered the legendary Fokker Triplane of 1917 . OK now, with us so far? 

So, we asked around and found from discussions with other independent garages and the trade it would appear that they are trying to remove all competition from the independents. This may possibly include us. Previous communiqués from BMW asked us to stop using the BMW badge on our specially commissioned spinning wheel motif, to change the design and colouration on our TCS stripe logo that we have used for the last 12 years, to remove the pictures of BMW cars and photograph our own (in case somebody had copyright on the images) and to change our website name  from www.bmw.spares.btinternet.co.uk all of which we did, complete with redirection to our new site at  www.tcsautos.co.uk so our customers could change their bookmarks at their leisure and do not suffer any inconvenience. 

So after doing a "Neville" and bending over backwards to all the big boy's demands imagine our surprise when the letter popped through our door. The letter said (in part); "We also note that you are continuing to use the domain name bmw.spares.btinternet.co.uk please confirm that you are ceasing all use of this domain name." It goes on to further say ;  "The use of the domain name coupled with the images of BMW vehicles and the wording may confuse members of the public into believing that your business is authorised or approved by BMW when this is not the case." 

To right it is not the case. We have never attempted to claim any allegiance to BMW other than being able to keep our customer's BMW cars in tip top condition, tuned to perfection and safe. We take great pride in the skill of our engineers and also rather resent the implication that the people who read our web site are so mentally incompetent as to be fooled into thinking that we are AUTHORISED by anyone other than our loyal customers to look after their cars. We do not cut corners with our customers car repairs, servicing and safety or the competence of our engineers. We do not have a glitzy gin palace in a prime location to maintain. This saving we pass on to our customers. Who appreciate it. So there. 

The use of bmw.spares is actually part of our old email address with our internet provider (BT) who then allocate web space with an address incorporating the email address and their domain name. So, as such, we do not own the domain that seems to be in dispute, we merely rent a sub domain from BT. As the email address bmw.spares got flooded by spam (regularly over 500 a day from REAL criminals) we have long since stopped using it as we thought we may miss important messages from genuine customers. We employ a third party company to look at our old address mail and forward any that may have been incorrectly marked as spam direct to us and added to the NOTspam filter.

If you do NOT think that we are trying to "pass off" (which means trying to pretend that we are something we are not, i.e. an authorised franchise or dealer) please send an email to us. If you think we are being unfairly hounded please send an email to bmwgroup.customerservice@bmwgroup.com  or agould@marks-clerk.com . Please copy us with your comments even if they are unkind to us. We really would not like you to get the wrong impression of us. Note: emails to our address do NOT cost anything, nor will you loose your home or get diverted to a premium rate address in India. Your emails will go neither up nor down. A full copy of the letter may be seen at our global headquarters in High Wycombe, nailed to the wall. Unfortunately the 20th Jan letter never got as far as us.