i have had 3 services so far and my mileage is approx 38000 and i did not pay anything extra.

The intention of the Mini TLC pack is quite clear and simple. You get 5 years or 50,000 miles of servicing. Minis officially need a service every 2 years or 18,500 approx (whichever comes first) thus in 5 years you get a max of 2 services regardless of wether they are dictated by time or distance.

BMW are quite clever with the 50,000 miles since the greatest distance you can actually get the 2nd service is 37,000 miles. It looks better on paper than in reality.

But if you did 37,000 miles in 2 years there would still be 3 years left on the plan and if your mileage dropped to say 60,000 miles a year you would be due the next service after 2 years but still just under 50,000 miles. That way you should get 3 services, wonder if its worked for anyone.

But at £150 its still far cheaper than paying for individual services. Just carry out an interim oil change yourself using a Pela extractor if you are uneasy about extended oil changes.

We've had 2 Minis from new and would not buy another. Everything is 'smoke and mirrors' in our experience, including the dealer trying it on to charge £50 (yes, £50) to charge the battery overnight to investigate the stop-start not working whilst the car was still in warranty. We also fell foul of the TLC package as above as ours was a low mileage car.

When buying the first Mini the local dealer would not do a deal on the day, so I found another one on the phone that would. When dealer 1 phoned to ask where his order was, and was told that he had had the chance on the day to close but didn't take it, he said 'they can't do that' regarding dealer 2's flexibility. That told me all I needed to know.

Despite the poor service cover in some instances it seems to me that there a lot of tidy older Minis around. Just my subjective view of course. Out of curiosity I tried to see if I could find the survival rate of 2003 minis - the first year of full sales I think. I did dig out that 40500 were sold in uk but I couldn't find anything to track the survival of particular years, just overall numbers of the model (irrespective of age) registered at the year-end. Anyone know if surival data of cars from a particular year is accessible anywhere?

If you detail a bit more exactly what is in dispute, then you may be able to get some advice.

The TLC pack covered for X years or Y miles, whichever comes first - and exactly what is covered has varied over time. The pack being sold with new cars now, for example, is 3 years / 36k miles. A couple of years ago, the pack covered 5 years/50k miles.