A fob is not cut at a counter. It is matched to the options your vehicle was built with, cut if it carries a blade, and enrolled into the immobiliser beside the car. Lost, cracked, soaked or bought online and refusing to pair, a replacement fob is finished in one visit anywhere in Vancouver.
Two things decide how a fob call goes: whether the part on the van is the exact one your vehicle was built to accept, and whether the technician can stand beside the car long enough to enrol it. Neither is a surprise we like to meet at the kerb, so both get answered while you are still on the call.
Everything happens at the vehicle. The fob is matched to the car, cut if it carries a blade, enrolled into the immobiliser, and then tried button by button while you watch. That covers a plain remote, a remote head key, a flip or switchblade key, and a push-to-start proximity fob. What we ask for is the year, make and model, the registration and photo ID that show the car is yours, and whatever is printed on the fob you already have.
The badge on the tailgate does not decide which fob you need. The options the car was built with do. A single model year can leave the factory taking a two-button remote, a four-button version with a powered tailgate, or a proximity fob nobody presses at all, and the three are not interchangeable. A fob carrying more buttons than the car has functions will enrol happily and then do nothing on two of them, so the button layout gets checked before a part comes off the van.
The fastest way to settle all of that is the fob you already own. Turn it over: the part number and the approval markings on the back place it in a family, and the blade profile, where there is one, covers the rest. If every fob is gone, the VIN answers the same question from the other direction. Either way it is a thirty-second conversation that saves a second visit.
Three different faults arrive described in the same words, and they are not the same job. A case that has cracked, worn through at the buttons or stopped closing at the seam, with sound electronics inside, is a reshell: the board and the blade move into a fresh housing and the car never learns anything happened, so there is no enrolment to pay for. A board that has taken water or a hard drop is properly dead, and that is a new fob supplied and enrolled. The third case is a fob in perfect condition that the car simply no longer answers, which is an enrolment on its own with no part involved.
Which of the three you have is worth being told rather than guessed at, since the cheapest of them involves buying nothing. The technician opens the fob at the car and the quote follows what is found, not the worst case.
A lost fob is not an inert piece of plastic. It is a working remote in somebody else's pocket, and it keeps working until the car is told otherwise. Fobs are not cancelled one at a time on most systems, so retiring a missing one means re-enrolling the set: every fob present at that moment stays in the car's memory and everything absent falls out of it. Bring all the fobs you still hold to the visit, or you will pay to enrol them back in afterwards.
The same procedure answers the question that follows a private sale, when a car changes hands with one fob and a vague assurance about the second. If you cannot account for every fob the vehicle has ever had, re-enrolling the set is what makes it certain. And if the fob went missing on a ring that also held your house or suite key, treat the door as a separate job the same week, because rekeying the cylinder is what settles that half.
Two different products answer to the word fob in a city this full of strata towers, and only one of them is ours. The credential that opens a lobby on Burrard or Nelson, the fob entry at a Marinaside Crescent tower, or the parkade and elevator at Hampton Place belongs to the building's access-control system: registered to the building, issued by the strata or the access-control contractor it hires, and not something a locksmith can clone. A lost building fob starts with your property manager, not with us: where building management asks us in and authorises the work we can do it, but the credential is theirs to issue.
The fob on this page is the one the car answers to, and the two systems never meet. Your own suite deadbolt and your car's immobiliser are both work we do; the lobby reader is not. It is worth separating the two on the phone before anyone drives out, because a strata fob and a proximity key get described in the same words by someone who lost both off one ring.
| Fob type | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Coin cell only, if that is the whole fault | $10–$25 |
| Enrolling a fob you already own | $60–$120 |
| Remote fob supplied and enrolled | $90–$190 |
| Remote head key, blade and remote in one | $140–$260 |
| Flip or switchblade fob | $120–$240 |
| Proximity smart key, push-to-start | $180–$400 |
| All keys lost, full re-enrolment | $220–$460 |
Programming is not a separate line on the invoice here: the band you are quoted already has the fob in it, the cutting where the fob carries a blade, and the enrolment. European and luxury systems sit at the top of their band, and a small number of makes restrict enrolment to dealer software, which you hear on the phone rather than in a parking lot. A reshell comes in under a replacement because there is no new board to buy, and it gets quoted once the technician has the fob open.
Year, make and model, plus what the fob is doing: lost, cracked, soaked, or bought online and refusing to pair. Read us the numbers off the back if you still have it.
A street, a driveway or a lane pad and we drive straight to it. Behind a parkade gate, somebody has to bring the technician down, so that gets arranged while you are still on the phone.
The blade is cut where the fob carries one, the fob is enrolled, the set is re-enrolled if the job calls for it, and every button is tried at the car before the van moves.
Most fob replacements are not rescues. The case broke a fortnight ago, you have been driving on the other fob, and the job has been waiting for an hour that suits you rather than an hour that suits the fob. Booked that way it is a calm twenty minutes with the numbers already checked and the right part already on the van, which is the version of this work worth aiming for.
Choose the place as well as the time, because all this needs is the car standing still for a while with you beside it for the ownership check. The easy version is a car that already sits somewhere for hours: a Langara College lot on West 49th, the Rose Garden or Thunderbird parkades out at UBC, the park-and-ride at New Westminster Station, a stall near the Oakridge-41st Canada Line station. A car left like that is a job for the middle of a Tuesday afternoon rather than the end of a bad evening.
The version that costs time is a car parked behind a door that opens only for the people who live there: an underground on Granville or Richards, or the parkade under a Yaletown tower, where somebody has to bring the technician down. A public pay parkade is a different thing, so a car sitting in the short-term parkade at YVR is an ordinary call. Give us the level and the stall when you book, tell the concierge to expect someone, and the visit runs the same length as one on a Kitsilano driveway.
Pick the area the car is parked in. Where it stands changes the visit more than the badge on the tailgate does: downtown and Yaletown cars are usually in an underground somebody has to let the technician into, while Dunbar street parking, Kitsilano driveways and east-side parking pads let the work start on arrival.
The rest of the automotive work travels on the same van: blades cut, chips coded, coin cells fitted, ignitions repaired, locked doors opened.
If the fob went missing on a ring with house keys on it, the door end of the problem is here.
Pick-, drill- and bump-resistant cylinders with keys that can’t be copied at the hardware store. Cut, pinned and registered in-shop.
1/2" steel door, digital keypad, fitted and bolted on site.
Car keys are priced by vehicle. Pick what you need and we’ll collect your make, model & year to text you an exact quote.