Few dramas can be worse than getting to your car, pressing the key fob and discovering it no longer responds. You can quickly find yourself needing to call for emergency roadside assistance while stranded outside your vehicle until someone can fix it.
A key question that will need to be answered is what the cause of the problem is. The follow-up is what you can do to prevent such situations from arising in future.
These questions pivot on whether the cause is related to your key fob, which it sometimes is, or something else. If the problem is with the fob, this is where we can help by coding a spare for you.
We can also provide the emergency service of a car key replacement so you can get back on the road, or provide the security of having two working fobs in case one stops working.
What Are the Common Causes Of Electronic Car Locks Failing To Respond?
According to car review site Autohit, the issue of non-response to key fobs is common. Cases have risen 40 per cent over the past five years as systems have become more sophisticated. Apart from issues with the key, possible causes include:
- Low batteries
- Damaged transponder chips
- System memory corruption
- Extreme weather
This does mean that you need your car and its lock systems checked over to ensure the problem is isolated and remedied.
However, that doesn’t mean you are left with no immediate way of knowing. A second key fob can help because if one works and one does not, that can show what the problem is. In that case, the next step is to get the dysfunctional fob fixed.
Research by Green Flag published last year found that 25 per cent of drivers had at some point been unable to get into their car because of a key fault.
However, while electronic devices may not always work well, they can at least be set up not to lock the car if left inside it. This means drivers with one won’t be among the 62 per cent of key-related cases Green Flag dealt with that were caused by keys being locked in the car.