registry

[Deneb aka Doc Fjord]

I just went to >browse> registry and found an email address to find the manufacture date for my car. grouparchiv@bmwgroup.com

The reply I got was "...address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail."

My VIN 2365174. Does anyone have the correct address?

Thanks

[Mark92131]

Unfortunately, the free service to provide the data on your car is no longer available.  You can however buy a certificate from the BMW group.  Here is some information.

 

Mark92131

 

Julia Oberndörfer

--
BMW Group
Julia Oberndörfer
BMW Group Classic
Archiv, Sammlung, Classic Brand Management (AK-50)
Historischer Informationsdienst
Moosacher Straße 66
80809 München

Postanschrift:
80788 München

Tel: +49-89-382-49792
Fax: +49-89-382-24765
Mail: julia.oberndoerfer@bmwgroup.com
Web: http://www.bmwgroup.com

[Conserv]

Noting that Mark, above, warns of the probable outcome, a need to pay 125€ for the formerly free data, the current email address for general inquiries is:

 

hdz.info@bmwgroup.com

 

This address replaced info.grouparchiv@bmwgroup.com last year, after a reorganization of the archives.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

 

 

 

[visionaut]

FWIW, I wrote BMW Group Classic recently about this VIN Info change.
 

Here’s the exchange:

 

——

 

Hi,

We used to be able to send a a short email to Andreas Harz at BMW Group Classic (and later to your hdz.infoaddress) providing our classic BMW VIN, and we could get a nice short enail reply with the date of manufacture, original color, and vehicle delivery info for that classic BMW.  This was a GREAT service!!

However, just recently we’re finding that free contact info service is unavailable  - and we are being told to instead request/purchase a Certificate with said info for $125! 

Please let me know that you haven’t eliminated the free email VIN info request handling. Only offering purchase of this info now via a Certificate would be a big error for your Classic customers.

Thanks in advance.

 

——

Thank you very much for your feedback.

We understand that you are surprised that a service that was free for a long time is now chargeable. Therefore, please let us briefly present our point of view:

In recent years, inquiries for manufacturing and delivery data have increased more and more, most recently to over 6,000 per year. We also often received several inquiries for the same vehicle, sometimes for different data (production date, recipient, color, etc.). The enormous number of inquiries meant that we were unable to fulfill our actual task as an archive — the collection, registration and digitization of relevant documents — less and less.

To be able to continue to provide vehicle information, we have therefore brought in additional staff for this purpose, whose costs we pass on. At the same time, we have also created a uniform format with the digital birth certificate that contains all production and delivery data we have.

We considered this decision for a long time, but the alternative to this procedure would have been to completely discontinue the service. We therefore hope that you understand our approach.

Sincerely

BMW Group
Julia Reiter
Konzernkommunikation und Politik
BMW Group Classic

 

——

 

Thank you Julia for your prompt reply.

 

I appreciate your viewpoint you shared with me. I wish you had reached out when confronted with increased demand, and hadn’t chosen the ‘add staff’ option knowing it would lead to charging for the info..

 

I’m a lifetime Bimmerphile, longtime member of the BMW CCA, and also a longtime member of the BMW2002FAQ.com community forum (the largest BMW 2002 site/resource in the world). Our forum has tens-of-thousands of members from across the globe (if you have an 02 and need info, you come to the FAQ). We’ve been telling new folks who show up wanting to learn their 02 production history to contact Andreas Harz at Mobile Tradition ( yes, going that far back) for the info - so we have contributed to the request traffic..

 

But Andreas said the effort took 15 mins at most to look it up and reply with an email — so it didn’t seem very disruptive.

 

Being frank, what we’ve never understood, is why wouldn’t BMW Group Classic just publicly publish that database, so there’s no effort required at all, and folks can help themselves. There no sensitive data or trade secrets in it - but for some reason it’s being protected like it. For a 02, it’s just VIN, birthdate, color, & delivery info from 1967 to 1977. Why it that ‘closed off’ data? If folks had crazy ideas like counting how many Inka 1600ti were made, it’d be easy. Why does Group Classic choose to make that info IMPOSSIBLE to know, when you have the data? We can’t rationalize that ‘hoarding’ mentality from a history-focused organization.

 

Another option might’ve been to provide our 2002 FAQ community the full 02 listing so we can handle the queries ourselves, vs having to ask Group Classic. But instead you preferred to ‘retain’ it as private info - basically requiring us to contact you. And by now charging to access it, it will sadly become even more restricted, not less so.

 

When we see the efforts to revitalize and grow Group Classic, we applaud. (Please bring your new ‘Classic service centers’ to the US!). But we also expected your Archive building and automation projects would lead you to open up this classic data by publishing searchable databases of this historical  production info for all to access, not to further limit it’s access and turn it into a money stream.

 

Why would not a 1-time expense to publish a searchable database be a better option than hiring folks to have to do this look-up that Classic owners could do for themselves?

 

Perhaps your focus on archiving is clouding the understanding that validating and organizing the data is key, but making it easily available is most important.   Sharing it by publishing it, not sealing it off behind a cash register, should be the goal.. 

 

I hope you’ll appreciate our point of view too. And perhaps reconsider your approach to archiving and sharing BMW Group Classic’s rich history by focusing on how to best share this info without having to be unnecessary gatekeepers.

 

Best Regards.

 

——

 

🙂 oh well.. 

[popovm]

Something that’s not clear to me is if the new for-pay certificate provides more info or if it just the same bit of info we used to get via the free email. Anyone know?

Edited May 15 by popovm

[visionaut]

1 hour ago, popovm said:

Something that’s not clear to me is if the new for-pay certificate provides more info or if it just the same bit of info we used to get via the free email. Anyone know?

 

https://www.bmwgroup-classic.com/en/offers-and-services/classic-center.html

Here’s the birth certificate…

 

chassis VIN, engine VIN, model, gearbox, color, production date, delivery date, delivered to & delivery location.

 

Looks exactly like what we've gotten by email to me.

 

Edited May 15 by visionaut
Getriebe…

[popovm]

12 minutes ago, visionaut said:

 

https://www.bmwgroup-classic.com/en/offers-and-services/classic-center.html

Here’s the birth certificate…

 

chassis VIN, engine VIN, model, gearbox, color, production date, delivery date, delivered to & delivery location.

 

Looks exactly like what we've gotten by email to me.

 

 

 

I dunno, Fred and Andreas' signatures have got to be worth at least $100. 

[Conserv]

4 hours ago, visionaut said:

 

https://www.bmwgroup-classic.com/en/offers-and-services/classic-center.html

Here’s the birth certificate…

 

chassis VIN, engine VIN, model, gearbox, color, production date, delivery date, delivered to & delivery location.

 

Looks exactly like what we've gotten by email to me.

 

+1

 

It is, and has always been, identical information.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

 

[Conserv]

9 hours ago, visionaut said:

FWIW, I wrote BMW Group Classic recently about this VIN Info change.
 

Here’s the exchange:

 

——

 

Hi,

We used to be able to send a a short email to Andreas Harz at BMW Group Classic (and later to your hdz.infoaddress) providing our classic BMW VIN, and we could get a nice short enail reply with the date of manufacture, original color, and vehicle delivery info for that classic BMW.  This was a GREAT service!!

However, just recently we’re finding that free contact info service is unavailable  - and we are being told to instead request/purchase a Certificate with said info for $125! 

Please let me know that you haven’t eliminated the free email VIN info request handling. Only offering purchase of this info now via a Certificate would be a big error for your Classic customers.

Thanks in advance.

 

——

Thank you very much for your feedback.

We understand that you are surprised that a service that was free for a long time is now chargeable. Therefore, please let us briefly present our point of view:

In recent years, inquiries for manufacturing and delivery data have increased more and more, most recently to over 6,000 per year. We also often received several inquiries for the same vehicle, sometimes for different data (production date, recipient, color, etc.). The enormous number of inquiries meant that we were unable to fulfill our actual task as an archive — the collection, registration and digitization of relevant documents — less and less.

To be able to continue to provide vehicle information, we have therefore brought in additional staff for this purpose, whose costs we pass on. At the same time, we have also created a uniform format with the digital birth certificate that contains all production and delivery data we have.

We considered this decision for a long time, but the alternative to this procedure would have been to completely discontinue the service. We therefore hope that you understand our approach.

Sincerely

BMW Group
Julia Reiter
Konzernkommunikation und Politik
BMW Group Classic

 

——

 

Thank you Julia for your prompt reply.

 

I appreciate your viewpoint you shared with me. I wish you had reached out when confronted with increased demand, and hadn’t chosen the ‘add staff’ option knowing it would lead to charging for the info..

 

I’m a lifetime Bimmerphile, longtime member of the BMW CCA, and also a longtime member of the BMW2002FAQ.com community forum (the largest BMW 2002 site/resource in the world). Our forum has tens-of-thousands of members from across the globe (if you have an 02 and need info, you come to the FAQ). We’ve been telling new folks who show up wanting to learn their 02 production history to contact Andreas Harz at Mobile Tradition ( yes, going that far back) for the info - so we have contributed to the request traffic..

 

But Andreas said the effort took 15 mins at most to look it up and reply with an email — so it didn’t seem very disruptive.

 

Being frank, what we’ve never understood, is why wouldn’t BMW Group Classic just publicly publish that database, so there’s no effort required at all, and folks can help themselves. There no sensitive data or trade secrets in it - but for some reason it’s being protected like it. For a 02, it’s just VIN, birthdate, color, & delivery info from 1967 to 1977. Why it that ‘closed off’ data? If folks had crazy ideas like counting how many Inka 1600ti were made, it’d be easy. Why does Group Classic choose to make that info IMPOSSIBLE to know, when you have the data? We can’t rationalize that ‘hoarding’ mentality from a history-focused organization.

 

Another option might’ve been to provide our 2002 FAQ community the full 02 listing so we can handle the queries ourselves, vs having to ask Group Classic. But instead you preferred to ‘retain’ it as private info - basically requiring us to contact you. And by now charging to access it, it will sadly become even more restricted, not less so.

 

When we see the efforts to revitalize and grow Group Classic, we applaud. (Please bring your new ‘Classic service centers’ to the US!). But we also expected your Archive building and automation projects would lead you to open up this classic data by publishing searchable databases of this historical  production info for all to access, not to further limit it’s access and turn it into a money stream.

 

Why would not a 1-time expense to publish a searchable database be a better option than hiring folks to have to do this look-up that Classic owners could do for themselves?

 

Perhaps your focus on archiving is clouding the understanding that validating and organizing the data is key, but making it easily available is most important.   Sharing it by publishing it, not sealing it off behind a cash register, should be the goal.. 

 

I hope you’ll appreciate our point of view too. And perhaps reconsider your approach to archiving and sharing BMW Group Classic’s rich history by focusing on how to best share this info without having to be unnecessary gatekeepers.

 

Best Regards.

 

——

 

🙂 oh well.. 

 

Tom,

 

Fabulous inquiry and follow-up. Thank you for doing this and doing it so beautifully!

 

Best regards,

 

Steve

 

[2761377]

just for some context-

 

this type of service is also available from several different firearms manufacturers. and for decades has been a fee-based service from them all. $125 is right in line with current fees from them. many ask for a letter on guns that value well under $2k.

 

that such a service was free for so long should be considered a righteous favor, not a set-in-stone entitlement.

 

as with collectible firearms, such a certificate adds to the value of the car.

 

jmo

[visionaut]

31 minutes ago, 2761377 said:

such a certificate adds to the value of the car.

 

I respectfully disagree. It’s not provenance in any way. Here’s a printout - lol. 

 

Now the Classic Certification where they take in your car, is another thing entirely.

 

Figures there was something else going on with the stupid price (if it was $30-50 no one would be complaining). The collector market. Great. F them.

[John76]

Steve @Conserv 

 

Do you know how many VIN certified vehicles are in our registry?

If what the BMW Group Classic is saying is true about the 6000 annual requests for "Birth Certificates", there must be many duplicates. Of all the '02s manufactured, I would guess a good number of the survivors are here in the USA.

Maybe the FAQ can provide Birth Certificates from our data base to the "newbies" who recently acquired a 2002.

 

Tom @visionaut...great response to BMW!  This is not info that should be hoarded and held hostage.

 

John

[visionaut]

John — Between Les’ DB and the FAQ register we’ve always been able to get as close as a month to the cars likely ‘birthday’. But rarely the exact day..

 

The VIN already gives us the gearbox, because BMW coded ranges for manual vs automatic.
 

But original color and delivery info wouldn’t be likely results we can ‘guess’ well.

[AceAndrew]

On 5/15/2024 at 7:00 AM, visionaut said:

FWIW, I wrote

%100 that response email ended up in the bin.  Their decision to start charging and providing a printout was undoubtedly done as the result of some internal meetings surrounding the profitability/efficiency of the classic division.  I'm sure the initial offer from Andreas to pull up data and email it to Joe Schmo represented something beyond the scope of his normal role.  As more email requests came in, the more of a time suck it became.  

 

As for making the database public, is there record of any corporation doing such a thing?  I can imagine that there would be some nere-do-wells that would look up records of rare-spec vintage bimmers in order to appropriate the vins for their restorations (used to think that stuff doesn't REALLY happen until I laid my eyes on some vin swapped 02's from a popular European restoration company).

 

Thinking about it, this would actually be a great use of AI.  Feeding the current database into an AI that could interface with either a classic employee or customer would be cheap, quick, and effective.  Shoot, charge $5 on the website and you'd look very clever at your next performance review meeting!

As for the "BMW Classic Center" stateside .... there is internal corporate movement on that.

[visionaut]

There were 400,000 02s produced. 6000 is only 1.5%. So it’s doesn’t seem out of line. 

 

But that seems like too many to come from FAQ. We’d need 20 folks a day asking for the info! I suspect a realistic FAQ query rate would  be more like 1 a day (300 a year). So who/where are this amount of queries coming from? It’s gotta be another BMW site somewhere, no? ( vs. a single person wearing out their welcome).

 

This ‘archiving’ also recently took place with Bosch Group Classic. They used to publish photos of all of their original microfiche records. (I downloaded all the 02 distributor pages, plus many others.) You can see exactly when each Bosch product was used during 02 production. Then they launched a data archiving and modernization effort on their records. Sounds great right? Well afterwards, they only now publish and share less than 5% of that data content .  

 

boo…