Rant: Replacing a car key

[jim]

What a pain in the ass this has become. Last week, my son somehow lost his car key to a Ford Fiesta. Last Wednesday, my wife went to the nearest Ford dealership (where we just bought a new Focus) with the Fiesta and asked them to make a new key.

No can do.

They weren't setup, or didn't have the equipment, or some damn thing. Told us to take it to the dealership that we bought the car from. My wife calls on Thursday, and she makes an appointment on Friday. She gets there Friday, waits an hour, and then is told that they have to order something before they can make the key. Come back next Wednesday.

So she does, and she sits for almost an hour. They tell her "Computer system down", can't make key. They will do her the favor of calling other dealerships in the area to see if they can fit her in. Luckily a dealership 20 miles away agrees.

Off she goes, and they get the key made, but it doesn't work. They spend an another monkeying around with it until finally they get it programmed right.

$200.

So, 3 dealerships over 3 different days, and $200 for a god damned key. Way back when when I lived in the city limits of Chicago, I had a car stolen. They recovered it "driveable" but pretty damaged in Harvey, IL. Guy got into a police chase and hit a pole. That day was cheaper and less of a hassle than getting this key (I confess my wife did 100% of the work)

Lesson: Don't lose your car keys. You can't go to the hardware store anymore and get a new one.

Technology, making our lives better!

[cardinalkarp]

I would have raised hell w/ the dealership, especially since it sounds like you're a repeat customer. You can always call Ford directly as well....or you could have.

[Radbird]

Car keys are small computers these days.

[jim]

I told my wife to show them my text to her when she told me about one of the screw ups. I simply said:

Mother [expletive] s.

I don't know if she did - probably not. She said they were freaking out themselves, and she figured being a [expletive] would not help. So I think she just bit her lip, I really don't think they did anything on purpose or were intentionally being difficult. It sounded [expletive] up from the get go, and my wife was just along for the ride.

[cardinalkarp]

Maybe raise hell wasn't really what I meant, being in a customer service oriented industry I can say first hand that being an a-hole to a person isn't going to help your situation out one bit...in fact it will do just the opposite.

But, w/ that many screwups on their end and having you go all over the place should have translated to some sort of discount on your end.

[IMADreamer]

You should have said "$200 after all this headache?" They've already made your key, if you don't take it they eat it. So I'd have told them $100 or [expletive] off. If they say no, you call up Ford.

[jim]

By the time the key was done I think all my wife wanted to do was take it and get out of there. She would have paid $500 at that point.

[Freed Roger]

We used to lose car keys quite a bit. Then one day, I had a spare made about 12 years ago at hardware store -brought it home and didn't work.

On just one of our cars we are still able to get a spare made at locksmith -it has a chip, but he has some sort of gizmo that makes it work - for about 80 bucks. He used to charge me about 40, but probably saw what dealers are charging.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I've got a Prius and they've got this microprocessor'ed dongle. $250-300 to replace. WTF? I endorse this rant.

[jim]

The money is bad enough, but the running around aggrevation was actually worse.