FURTHER UPDATE

I really must relay this to you, it'll make you smile/cry. After getting the car to the $tealers yesterday morning I got a call 7 hours later from a woman stating "the unit is faulty, we can order another for you - £1,000 please".

I patiently explained to her that the unit is NOT faulty, a botched attempt at a firmware upgrade has left it unusable but the issue is NOT a hardware one. She responded that their 'diagnostics' had detected all fuses are OK, all wiring is intact BUT the unit is from an E39, therefore faulty - £1,000 please.

I told her that the Sat-Nav units are interchangeable, that her insistence that it's faulty is akin to me telling her her PC needs replacing because MS Word wasn't correctly installed (was going to give her the example of flashing the BIOS but that would be too confusing so kept it simple).

She then said "I'll speak to xxxxx and get back to you". So far nothing but I did tell her before she got off the 'phone that I was not impressed with their 'diagnosis' and poor service; if it'd been someone who didn't know better then a lot of money would be changing hands because of their lazy fault-finding technique.

I'll keep you all posted as to what happens but have already put in a bid for a new unit on eBay. If I can revive my one myself (get the strong feeling the $tealers won't) then the surplus one will go back on eBay, if not then still far better than paying over £1,000 + VAT :-O

ALI