My wife and I bought a 2010 Mini Cooper S Convertible last month. But when we drove it off the lot, we noticed that the CD player did not work. So we brought it back to the BMW/Mini dealer to have it replaced .. which took 9 days. After picking up the car and driving home, we noticed that the Bluetooth Phone, Parking Distance Control, and all programmable features on the car were not working. We called the dealership and they stated that they had to reprogram the car after installing the new CD player ... and that they must have re-programmed it incorrectly . .. and asked us to return it to the shop to re-program the car again. They seemed to infer that this is common to re-program a car after installing a new CD player.

Question is : Does this seem odd? Are they not telling us something? Seems that simply replacing a CD player does not require the dealership to completely re-program the vehicle. Anybody out there know?

Thanks.

 

Not unusual at all --- MINIs are computer centric cars --- Everything is controlled by computer.

My car had to be completely reprogrammed to fix the electric windows not closing properly.

 

Yes one of the benefits of the computer age, when I was much, much much younger I could take apart an engine, when I opened the hood I knew what everything was and what it did, the most complicated thing electrical was the fuse box, and installing a radio didn't require an electical engineering degree. Oh well I'm glad the world is full of smart people, wish I was still one.

 

Based on what people have reported in the forum, my impression is that the software is not modular and a dealer does not have capability to directly update individual components. The dealer sends BMW the configuration they want and downloads the complete software installation for the entire car.

 

Thanks for the responses. Seems that the full reprogramming is normal after replacing a CD player.