Car sat nav

Because the previous owners were two sensible to pay for the 'upgrade'.

Indeed. Mine (Audi RNS-E) uses DVDs for user upgrades - including the ability to search by full postcode. It's a disgrace really, but if people are willing to pay . . .

I've had free upgrades on my 2.5 year old ford focus downloaded from the Web.

ROTFL!

Having just spent £85 for the update for the maps for a built in system (and that was a discounted price, the full price was about £140!) I'm tempted to agree ;-(

Licensing.

I believe there is a fee to pay to gain access to the full postcode database - and you need to continue to pay this fee to get updates.

However, with the advent of CarPlay, manufacturers have now reigned in the extra costs to the customer and appear to be absorbing them into the cost of the product. You may still need to pay for updates, though.

But I have to be honest, this current F10 5-series is the last car I'm likely to have where this is an issue, it'll be replaced by a 330e which will have CarPlay and the internal navigation will become redundant.

We have NEVER had 7 digit postcodes in the UK. 7 character, yes, but never

And a happy Xmas to you too.