Took it out of my mouth, baby.
There’s reasons I drive an adult version of a Tonka truck. This is one.
I know of several shops locally that can program a key. The technology is available for any who care to purchase it. The last diag tool I sold to a shop was about 4,000 dollars and when i sold it to them I offered them free updates for as long as they owned the tool. At that time the yearly subscription for updates was about 1200 dollars. The tool is also capable of diagnosing any problem within any computer system on the vehicle, which at this time, includes damn near everything. So don’t think there is some kind of super secret lockdown on this shit. Key blanks are sold by many manufacturers for far cheaper than you can buy them from the factory. The difference is the vehicle manufacturer only extends their warranty to products approved and sold by them. Hell, a bunch of locksmiths can cut and program these keys as well. Probably save you 40-50 dollars on what you would pay for them at the dealer. I don’t beleive any local ones I deal with sell the blanks that have remotes on the head however. But if cheap is what you want, who gives a shit?
Also, just so you know, this info IS provided with the paperwork when you buy a new vehicle. Don’t under estimate how lazy people are.
Omegaman, thanks for fighting my ignorance. I based my comments on the fact that I couldn’t find a replacement key for a used Acura that I bought for my son.
I priced from the local dealer at $165 a key and local locksmiths said that they couldn’t help since the dealer controlled the process
My son managed to get two replacements and a FOB fob for $120 after he moved out of town for a summer internship. He said he lucked out by explaining that he was a poor college student (true) working a summer job and only had one key for his car. Should have cost him over $300 but the sales parts rep felt sorry for him and programmed it free.
Next time I need a replacement for any smart key I’ll dig a little deeper in the area of locksmiths.
[QUOTE=BubbaDog;10588911
Next time I need a replacement for any smart key I’ll dig a little deeper in the area of locksmiths.[/QUOTE]
If you send me a PM I would be happy to help in any way I can. Cars are about the only thing I know well enough to offer help.
If you have a ~96 or newer Ford with only one key for it, do this ASAP, before you lose your one key. Go on eBay and search for PATS keys, they’re $9.00. Have a hardware store cut the key to match your existing one for $2 or so, and do the programming procedure yourself. I did it on my 98 Contour.
Then you actually got your money’s worth.
I love my VW, it’s saved my life at least once, but I have never seen a car with so many weird, costly problems that only the dealership could fix.
(Not talking about the key replacement. God, I hate that dealership.)
Transponder keys are becoming very common.
Some vehicles are pretty easy to program/duplicate with the proper software.
Fords, GM, and Honda’s require the software and the correct key blank.
Chrysler products require a PIN code which is special to each vehicle. The dealership has access to this number via the VIN number.
VW are a pain in the ass. There is a pin code, but only the dealership has it and they do not give it out. Here in town the VW dealership actually has people bring the keys to us to duplicate then take the keys back to the dealership to have programed.
Our shop just spent 10K on the equipment to program the majority of the transponder vehicles out there.
A ford like your NurseCarmen would have run 47.50 at our shop.
Also, if a automobile has a transponder key there are key blanks avalible to duplicate without the transponder chip. We use them all the time to make a mechanical key before using a more expensive transponder blank.
We have people come in all the time wanting a key without the transponder so they can have a spare in their wallet or purse.
The dealership here in town quoted someone 195 dollars to duplicate a key similar to yours, the guy was as upset as you. He also checked around and found a locksmith who could do it at a better price smile
I am glad you have a good experience with Apollo Locksmith. We locksmiths like hearing customers saying good things about us!
Osip
I had just the opposite happen w/Pontiac. The locksmiths wanted $55 and the dealer wanted $27.
Dealership service manager here.
A new key and remote for our cars is about $500 for the key, the cut, the remote, two pieces of software, and the technician’s time. A second key programmed at the same time is about $180 less since I only pay the technician once, and I can program up to six keys with one piece of software. Same with the remotes
Here is the deal, cars get stolen. In Europe, after the Berlin wall came down, high end cars like Mercedes, BMW and Volvos were getting stolen and driven east with such alarming regularity that the insurance industry threatened to not insure them any longer unless the cars were made more theft proof.
One of the results of this is chipped keys, another is rolling code remotes. In the US regulatory pressure has led to similar (not not quite as extreme) measures. In Canada some of these regulations are even tighter than the US.
There are a few myths in this thread.
First myth in this thread is that the dealer controls the codes/software that programs the keys. This is absolutely false. Here in the US by law the car maker has to make this information available to the aftermarket (for a fee of course) The dealer does not have a lock on this information.
I worked for an independent repair facility before I got my current job. We had the computer, car interface and everything needed to program keys and remotes. I recall quoting a replacement key/remote for a customer just before I left there. It was $504 + tax.
Here is how it broke down (all numbers are approx as I don’t have my notes from a month ago with me)
Sell price
Key $140
Remote 180
Swivel 5
Software$ 80
Labor $ 99
Total $504
Here is my costs
Key $100
Remote 120
Swivel 3
Software $ 40
Repair subscription $125/ 3 days. Now this subscription was good for as many cars as I needed to program over the three days. However is not unknown to only have one car that needs programing over a 3 day period.
Technician time with benefits $30. (approx)
So my total costs were $418 and we have not even taken into account the cost of the hardware that is needed to do the programing (A tad over $7,000 BTW)
Anyone that has ever owned a business will tell you that this is not a huge amount of gross profit. You don’t even want to know what the overhead is on my current shop is. 
Myth #2 in this thread, I can have my key cut for $2.50 cents. Maybe, it depends on the key. Many modern keys have side cut (sometimes called laser cut) key that take a special mill to cut. Since keys take a special mill to cut, and you won’t find these machines at Home Depot or ACE hardware. Last time I had a side cut key done at a local locksmith it was about $20 bucks and that was 15 years ago.
As an aside, right now I have on my desk, a repair order that I will have to discipline one of my technicians over. Our remotes come with two printed codes on the package. One 8 digits and the other 16 digits long. Both are case sensitive alpha numeric codes. If you un-program a remote from a car, it cannot be re-introduced to that car or any other without the 2 codes. Anyway a customer came in for an additional remote, and Einstein un-programmed the existing remote and then installed the new one. For some reason the customer finds this unacceptable. I can’t figure out why. 
So on Monday I get to give out a new remote and programming for free and write up my employee for being an idiot. ::: sigh:::
Point remains Rick is why is your overhead so high, why do the car companies structure is so that it is so high?
You are in the front line and get all the flak, but the car company makes most of the money and takes none of the heat.
Why can others do it for far less?
Why is the hardware, software and everything else so expensive, when the reality is that something like an encrypeted USB stick with pretty much a similar level of technology costs a fraction of your price?
'Cause it is a functional monopoly and a rip off, thats why.
Well said. It’d be trivial to implement key chip scheme that costs less then $20 to replace.
If you implement a less than $20 trivialy easy scheme for the chip, it holds to reason that it will be trivially easy to break said scheme.
OOPS. :smack:
I guess you missed the part in my last post about cars being stolen and taken to Russia. It is a constant arms race between the good guys and the bad guys.
As far as my overhead goes, you trying renting prime street corner real estate in Santa Monica. The car company has nothing to do with my rent, electrical bill, water, wages, do I need to go on? My customers also expect a rental car for free, or a factory loaner. These don’t grow on trees, they cost money. Money that is charged against my bottom line.
In short my customers don’t want to drive from Beverly Hills or Brentwood to east bumfuck to pay a bit less for a new ignition key.
My costs are fairly high, so I have to charge accordingly.
Never forget in a retail transaction there are three elements:
Price
Availability
Service
You may pick any two.
I have the parts in stock, I am right around the corner, and I offer awesome service. This is what my customers expect. as a result they get to pay for it.
It’s not that the scheme need to be trivially easy, it’s just that transferring the code for that scheme to a blank key should be easy. Any PC can transfer a gigabyte or two of encrypted information to an external device in a very short time. I just can’t understand why a key would be so difficult to require so much effort.
Give the owner of a car a CD with the information at the time of purchase. When he needs a new key he takes the CD to the dealer who pops the CD in a computer, a blank key in the programmer, and hands the owner the CD and a new key back in 10 minutes.
If the owner doesn’t have the CD, then sure, the process is more difficult and expensive, but wouldn’t giving the owner the CD be better customer service in the first place?
Bwahahahaha!!!
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Stop it, you’re killing me.
Hey, if you can claim that my car might get stolen and head for Russia, think that Dag Otto can stretch it a little too.
Its not like the customer is sophisticated enough to work with encrypted systems. Why I remember when I needed an additional programed remote for my garage door opener. I had to go to a specialist to get the encrypted module and have him use thousands of dollar software and 3 day licensing to prepare my…oh, wait. I did it myself for about $20.00.
Never mind.
Bullshit. Encryption isn’t expensive. My free web browser does it all the time, and it’s not trivial to break. Nor is there any reason for a key with data capabilities to have a $100 dealer cost, besides that being a price the manufacturer can get away with. I can buy far fancier electronics for a small fraction of the price. With open format standards and competition, I bet that the blank would cost about $10 (we’re talking about something like a 64 kilobyte (NOT megabyte or gigabyte) usb stick, after all, plus an rfid-ish bit and the physical aspect of the key) and someone would do up an an open source software interface with state of the art encryption. That would leave a couple bucks required to get the key kiosk to do the cutting.
That it costs more than this is purely because it’s a monopoly.
Nice reading for context there sparky. Need a little more straw for that man you are building?
Rick, I don’t think anyone is chewing you out for your actual costs, we just insist that most of the costs for materials and labor should be cheaper.
I hold in my hand (ok, not really, it would make typing pretty slow…) a credit card with a chip in it that allows me to make purchses just by tapping it on a special card reader. My liability should this be misplaced is nearly zero, it all goes to the credit card company, who has to cover the charges themselves. So security is certainly something that has been thought about, and I am sure the chip has security features built in, if not out of self-interest from the CC company, than because of federal regs.
How much does such a fancy thing like this cost? $150? $200? $500 you say? Pshaw, it was FREE when I signed up for the credit card.
Garage doors are similar. I have heard no facts proposed in this thread that make me beleive that an RFID key is more secure than your average garage door opener. If you’d like to bring those facts to light, I’d be willing to consider your argument here.
The fact is that the cost of a replacement key is not something most people consider when purchasing a car, so it doesn’t impact the sale, so there is little incentive for the mfr to change it, so you get this ridiculous system when it comes time to replace it.
Dealerships like complaints and calls to regional management, etc very little, and especially not for something as stupid as replacing a key. I am sure most of them would love to be able to just hand out a replacement key with a smile for a good customer. But they can’t hand out 300 bucks worth of equipment and service, you know? This needs to get back to the mfrs, but something tells me they have more important things to listen to right now.
Are you familiar with the word “stretch”?
Don’t go handing out that straw. Mix it with some of that bullshit that seems to be passed from the manufacturer to you and that you try to pass on to me.
Bullshit + straw = bricks
Pick up that brick and toss it back at the manufacturer.
As a customer I don’t mind the fees you charge me that are associated with reasonable costs - utilities, hardware, software etc.
But when you want to charge me $150 for what should be a $10 item because you had to pay $120 for it then you’re not doing me any favors with your explanation.
It just sounds like you’re saying, " Hey, I just got shit on so I’m shitting on you. Why are you angry?"