Thought I would check and see if anyone else had heard of this issue.
We just bought our first Mini a few weeks ago - a 2012 Countryman. Pretty base model, but we like it. Only has about 10,000 miles on it.
It has a few minor issues - like the steering wheel makes quite a bit of noise, and the service light was on, even though the dealer we got it from had supposedly just changed the oil. (We got it from a non-Mini dealer, since the mini dealerships around had nothing for used Countryman inventory).
So we took it into the mini dealership to get these few little minor issues taken care of, and they scan the key thing, and find that the vehicle has an inactive warranty, even though it is so new. They advised me to contact BMW to discuss the issue, but that they couldn't activate it from there. Their customer service had already closed for the day so I'm going to try them tomorrow, but anyone else ever heard of this?

 

Inactive warranty? I hadn't heard that one before. 10k miles is quite low, but not unknown of. Is it possible the mileage had been rolled back? The dealer you bought it from should have spotted that. Did you happen to see a carfax on it? While I don't trust carfax per se, it will show the mileage each time the vehicle was titled. Just a guess on my part, you gotta report back what BMW/MINI says, hopefully just a paperwork error..

 

Yeah we had a carfax report, and it didn't show any odometer issues... he did suggest that perhaps it was a vehicle that was purchased by someone in the military oversees or something, but the carfax shows it was registered here in Colorado at 6 miles as a personal vehicle, so really not sure what's going on with it...

 

Good luck. If it was originally purchased overseas (grey market), MINI USA may not be required to honor it. I would check your VIN with a decoder to verify it if the 'Market' field is USA. Here is one of many available:
http://www.bmwarchive.org/vin/bmw-vin-decoder.html

 

Thanks for the vin decoder link! I verified the market is listed as USA so hopefully it's just a minor issue or something we need to figure out... obviously we want the warranty .

 

Well I called the mini support number, the gal was very nice but seemed as confused as the dealer did, she suggested it might have been a military purchased vehicle or something which was why the warranty was never registered, but the carfax shows it was registered personal, so who knows...
Either way, she sent me a warranty validation form, basically just needing the VIN of the vehicle, copy of the bill of sale, etc. and send it back and they would work on getting the warranty validated within 10 days, so we'll see!

At least its not as bad as my first thought, that there was some fraud going on somewhere, or it was a vehicle that had been totalled and carfax didn't show it, or it was stolen, or... yada yada.

 

Good to hear that this is something you may be able to sort out. Do let us know how it ends.

None of these use-cases apply to you (hopefully), but I have heard of BMW occasionally "stripping" warranty from a car or two for something egregious, like taking a car and turning into a professional race-car shell. Or if they had bought-back the car as a lemon.

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My mini is a manufacturer buy back due to California lemon law. I knew it when I bought it, got the dealer to knock off a couple of $1k. It has full mini warranty. What I can't do is purchase a mini/bmw extended warranty. If I keep it past original warranty, I'll buy a third party warranty.

 

Received a packet in the mail from BMW today, and it was information indicating that the warranty had been validated and what the warranty included, etc. so I think we're back on track! Will get the mini scheduled for what we needed to get done and I guess we'll find out for sure, but I think we're on the right track!

 

That's great news, mattadams.

 

Glad to hear this was finally resolved for you! Just curious, did MINI make the factory warranty retroactive to the original owner purchase date, or did it start for you from the beginning?

 

It started from the original purchase date which was march of 2012.

 

Hate to resurrect a dead thread but I'm actually going through the exact same process right now. I just wanted to ping you and see if you had any issues getting services covered under the warranty?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Once the warranty was made active, I took it into mini shortly thereafter and they fixed an issue we were having for free, so no problems there!

 

Great news - thanks for following up!