My name is Anna. I live in Upstate NY. I own a 2011 Countryman ALL4 S. Current mileage 110,500+. As much as I love my car, I've had a number of issues with my Mini Me over the years. On Thursday, May 4, 2018 I had an appointment at dealership for them to replace the FRM on my car. I already knew what the problem was from my local mechanic and some research on here. Fortunately, BMW extended the warranty on this and I didn't have to pay out of pocket for this repair. While waiting for them to replace the FRM, our service advisor mentioned the water pump recall and asked if we wanted that done. Since we were there and it's a 6 hr drive round trip for us, I didn't want to waste a whole other day up in Latham, NY just for that, so we said yes.

FRM replaced, water pump replaced, and we start heading home. My husband had followed my daughter and I there as I had no working blinkers due to the FRM failure. Anyway, my daughter and I driving home, my husband following us, and 30 miles from the dealership my radio craps out, followed by multiple warnings lamps lighting up: air bag, passenger seat belt, ABS, traction control, brakes, battery light, steering wheel in which I lost all power steering. As this is happening I call my husband. I'm telling him what's going on and I smell burnt plastic, pulled off at the next exit, and coasted into gas station parking lot. I was concerned about a fire from the smell of burnt plastic so shut the car off. All of this happened in probably a 5 minute span of time. I took pics with my phone of the warning lights while coasting and as soon as we were stopped I had my daughter write down everything that happened. The car refused to start after that. I called the dealership, explained the situation where 30 miles from leaving there my car essentially died. The woman I spoke to said the call roadside assistance and have towed back. I said the warranty is up so we aren't covered by roadside assistance. Are we going to have to pay for a tow because as I see it we never had these issues until we left your shop. She said I dont have an answer for you and the manager left. I said I don't care, call your manager. She said he already left, I dont have authorization, blah blah blah. I told her that is no excuse. That right there is poor customer service and we would just deal with it ourselves. I hung up and called our insurance to see if they covered. We didnt have coverage, but while on the phone with insurance I got a call back from MINI dealer and the gal I spoke to talked to the manager (real hard to pick up the damn phone to make a call for a customer whi just left the dealership right?) and she said they would cover the towing and made arrangements to have tow service come. Tow truck finally came 2 hours later and loaded up my car to take back to the dealership.

Friday morning(yesterday) I called to be sure that my car was actually there. Yes it had made it. It was already in the shop being looked at and they would call once they had more info. 4 hours later I get a call from our service advisor and they don't yet know what the problem is. What? 4 hours and nothing? He says they probably won't know til Monday and it stuff needed to be ordered it wouldnt be til Monday. I told him we wanted to to know what was actually wrong before parts are being ordered and what it's going to cost and who is going to pay for it. He agreed. So here I am now.

I read a similar incident on a different thread from a fellow Mini owner after he had his water pump replaced and the same things happened. Has anyone else had these computer issues? If so, has the dealership been upfront and honest about it? Have they tried to take advantage of you (ex. wanting to do unneccesary work)? If so, were you able to get some compensation from your dealer? In my mind, these issues were non-existent until Keeler MINIs service department touched my car and interestingly this all happened just after the water pump was replaced by them. I am a woman, I took one year of auto mechanics back in high school (20 yrs ago) so I am knowledgable to a point but limited by 20 years of auto advancement and computers. If I have an issue I do my research and these forums have helped me more times than I can remember. Twice I have been to the dealership closest to me and they have tried to over charge me. Both times I called them out on it and they dropped/lowered the final repair cost.

Any insight/suggestions would be appreciated!

 

Sorry to hear about the issue. I wouldn't know what to think if that happens to me but things i would consider are 1: sue for damages and car rental allowance. 2: keep calling them until they fix it at their own expense. 3: write a letter to mini of usa explaining the issue and wait for a response. 4: take the car elsewhere and bite the bullet. :(

 

Thanks for the input MiniToBe. Hopefully the dealership will have some answers today. I'm trying to stay positive about the whole thing, but it's tough.

 

Wanted to post an update on my current situation with Mini Me. Dealership called aepund 4:15 pm yesterday to tell me the computer was fine. They found the grounding cable broke and fried my alternator, which in turn ruined my starter, and most likely need a new battery. Their estimate is $2,700 to repair. What???

I called my local mechanic for their input and awaiting an estimate from them which would have to include a tow from the dealership. I'm also going to call a mechanic who has great ratings and is just down the road from the dealership for an estimate as well.

I can't possibly see how the grounding strap just conveniently broke 30 miles after leaving the dealership. I looked up the location of the grounding strap online and I can't see how a stick, rock, or anything like that could make it up that far to damage it as well. Also, Mini Me is only 7 years ago so I can't fathom that there could be enough erosion to cause it to break. In addition to that, if it was in such a bad state to break so suddenly, how did they not see it when they were working on my car? And if they did see it, why would they not tell me their concerns? Wouldn't any legitimate business do that? Especially if their client would be driving home through heavy traffic and possibly lose control of their vehicle (my car lost power and power steering)?

I know we popped the hood after we were at the gas station. I don't recall seeing anything broken, but I mainly wanted to be sure nothing was on fire, or about to catch fire from the smell of burnt plastic. So I don't know if it was truly broke or they are just trying to take me for a ride.

Our plans are to fight the $2700 estimate, and if that is not to our satisfaction, have my car towed to another mechanic. We want to have everything in writing. What work was done, what is and is not broken, if we have the dealership work on it we want all the parts they remove to check if they were/are actually broken, and photos of the broken grounding strap before anything is done. Will see where it goes from there.

 

I think they should fix it. But corporates wont care for your agony and act like it is a separate unrelated incident. A used alternator is 75 and it takes less than an hour to replace.

As you said, how the heck did that strap come off (if that actually was what happened). Demand action and still write to their headquarters.

I would also be curious to know where did they come up with that number? (Other than from their a$$...lol)

 

 

So sorry I kept forgetting to post an update. The dealership told me the grounding strap broke, the arcing fried my alternator and burnt out the CAS unit, and my battery was no good. They upped their quote to $3800 to fix it and I flipped out over the phone. I asked for cost on all parts and questioned how many hours (labor costs are $110 per hour there) it was supposedly going to take to replace all of that. After that, they dropped $800 off the quote. I still wasn't happy about having to sink $3000 into my car, but the CAS unit and battery all needed to be programmed to the vehicle by the dealer. I couldn't do any of that myself and I needed my car back for work. I bit the bullet and blew a chunk of my savings, but after the fix my car has been running great. I hope it stays that way for a long time. I don't know if they tampered with the grounding strap or if it was just unfortunate circumstances, but I told them I wanted the "bad" parts. They supplied the broken grounding strap and the fried CAS unit. The CAS unit definitely smelled like it had fried. The grounding strap was intact except for the end that had come loose. I questioned them about where the other end, the connector, was and they said there was corrosion where it came loose. All they said was that it was corroded. They didn't say it must have come off while driving, or anything like that, and no end/connector was produced. In the end my car is fixed, and hopefully I won't ever have another experience like this. In all my years of driving I've never had a vehicle with so many problems. Yet, compared to some of the horror stories I have read here, I am happy I haven't had more issues.