Fun with incompetent BMW employees

So during the repairs of my BMW F650's carburetor, I lost the choke plunge. Not a big deal, just a tiny part regulating the fuel/air ratio at engine startup time.

So I picked up the phone and called the spare part department of BMW in Berlin, and told them the exact part I wanted. "Chokekolben" is 100% not possible to be misinterpreted, there is no other part with the same name. So I was told that this part is not available on it's own, but just in a set bundled with the linkage/string that actually attaches to the plunge.

One day later I was called that the part had arrived. It took me about an hour to get to the BMW subsidiary, only to find out that they had ordered the choke string, but it came without plunge.

They showed me the exploded view of the carburetor, and it was very clear that the plunge is sold separately for about EUR 3. I have no idea how one can misunderstand the exploded view and/or the spare part list associated.

After ordering the plunge, I asked them if they made the exploded views available for customers, so they could directly order a particular spare part number in order to avoid such misunderstandings. Apparently they only provide those spare part catalogues to their BMW partners, and they see no way how they could provide me a copy. *sigh*. So I will have to rely on some brain dead spare part sales assistant who has most likely never disassembled that bike ..

Luckily, there's eBay and I found somebody who sold the original BMW spare part catalogue on CD-ROM. What would the world be without eBay.

BMW, this happened about two weeks ago, and I still don't have that spare part.