Bolding mine
Honestly, does anybody really have a problem with having the “on switch” for their very expensive, slightly mobile toy, be somewhat complicated? Is that really such a horrible problem?
On a related note, has anybody seen the directors cut of “Gone in 60 seconds”? The one where Nick Cage got three keys cut to steal three Mercedes, but got busted when they still wouldnt start the cars he was trying to steal? Cant say I liked that version, dont think it had the pace of the original…
My car isn’t a toy. It’s a necessary piece of my life that I make as inexpensive as possible.
So yeah, I have a problem with a key that costs over $1.50 or so to duplicate.
Yeah, I sort of do. It’s not a big surprise to anyone that car keys get lost. So you’d think the car manufacturers would make the process of replacing the keys reasonably painless and inexpensive. But no, according to your previous post, it’s a touchy, painful process that needs a “trained technician”, despite the fact that the electronics in a chipped key can’t cost two bucks total and there’s absolutely nothing inherent about the task of reprogramming a key that a trained chimp couldn’t do.
In other words, the car manufacturers gleefully turned what used to be a $1.50 task into a profit center. And the schmucks still can’t make money.
And all of that data could probably fit on a 16MB thumbdrive. The fact that it is on a key does not impress me.
On the assembly line, you know the manufacturer isn’t going to all that trouble to make the original keys. So why is it so hard for a dealer (you know, the ones with the factory training) to do the same?
Again, the system shouldn’t be any harder than transferring data to a USB drive. Hell, car buyers should be given a CD with the information on it when they buy the car.
This thread inspired me to contact my dealership to see how much a replacement for the remote I lost a year ago would be.
$177
The problem is with the customers because they demand two conflicting, contradictory things. They want utmost security. No one should be able to get into my car without the key. And then they want to be able to get into the car easily without the key. That’s like wanting to marry a virgin who is really good in bed. No can do.
If the system is really secure then it should be that to get into the car without the key you should take the car to Detroit together with your DNA sample, twenty two forms of picture ID and $2.56 in postal stamps. But customers would object to that and demand a really easy way to get into the car without the key. But then they complain if a car is stolen because it just shows the system is not as secure as it should be.
And they always want it cheap.
There is no pleasing some people.
There’s your answer. Why should the car makers let you have a $2.10 key to use your car, when they can charge you $250?
You think that is worth hundreds of dollars?!
My truck does nothing like this. It is simply a truck. An F-150, one of the most basic and non-fancy trucks out there. The computer that changes the seat settings and radio stations never made it to within miles of this vehicle.
And omegaman.
Fuck you. I bought it from a private seller, and figured that a new key would cost all of five bucks.
It seems you figured wrong. I cannot see how you can blame that on anyone else. You see what happens when you assume…
Actually I’m complaining about paying more for it since it once cost $3.50 to make a duplicate and now cost $350
In today’s news gas went from $1.50 to $4.00. See any resemblance? Are you capable of understanding that? I don’t want to make this concept too difficult for you.
You say its a relatively simple process yet I still have a concern about that. For simplicity I took a quick look around and tried to find an authority on this process but all I could find is the info supplied by the chucklehead in the next quote.
I think Mr. Chucklehead disagrees with you
Sounds good. You give me a call when somebody steals your car and contents worth over $250,000.
Also, I’ll give you a call if somebody breaks into my home after buying a $12.00 garage door opener module and successfully programs it to the rolling codes of my garage door opener.
Again, my cost to duplicate access to my home with a reasonable protection scheme = $12.00 / My cost to duplicate access to my 10 year old car worth $4,000 = $350
Car manufacturers are always trying to find ways to continue revenue stream for aftermarket products and the key duplication process is an obviously result of that strategy.
Its very easy to make a protection scheme which gives the customer more control and less cost. The garage door example is proof of that. The customer can buy his own “key” and set and program his own code.
But why do that when you can suck money out of the customer? You might even luck out and find a few stupid service managers dumb enough to drink the Koolaid, believe the hype, and actually buy into the scheme.
Yeah, exactly. Except that second part. WTF?
[minor hijack]A friend of mine managed to lose the gas cap to her Kia Rio. So she went to the local auto supply store to get a replacement. She was told that Kia gas caps are only available from the dealers. So she went to the dealer and found out that the dealer charges $35 for a replacement gas cap. The auto shop she had gone to charged about $7 for their gas caps. :mad: [/mh]
Except for there was no me in the equation.
$125 really isn’t all that bad. Mine is over $350 bucks, has batteries that need replaced and doesn’t tolerate being washed in the washer when you forget to take it out of your pocket. Progress is such a wonderful thing.
I am confused by this post. My post was not directed at you.
Nor was mine at you. I was pointing out that usually when I assume something it’s usually “me” that gets hosed. It was more me agreeing with you.
Sure. That and everything else an encoded key does which has been mentioned by others in this thread. And it’s not “hundreds of dollars” - at least not for my Lincoln. When I bought the car last year, the salesman told me that replacement keys were in the $150.00 range. Used to be, a cheap-ass aftermarket car alarm cost more than $150.00. And that thing only made noise; it wouldn’t disable the ignition.
The gripe isn’t necessarily that the key holds information on a chip. The problem is with the manufacturers’ and dealers’ strategy of maintaining control over the process and thereby setting the price of duplication or replacement at an exorbitant level.
If you want to make a duplicate of your key, your only alternative is to buck up since the manufacturer set you up that way.
Take away the ownership of the process from the dealer and the price would drop like a rock. One easy way is if the new owner was given a PIN with his new car. He could take his key and his PIN to a third party supplier and get a duplicate made at a reasonable price. The PIN would add that extra layer of protection to the duplication process and it could be used as a seed value to create the proper programming for the key.
Just like replacing a lost ATM card the cost would be in dollars, not hundreds of dollars.