Back in the day, if you lost your car keys, there were two options:
1. Call your carefully guarded key code into a locksmith and have them cut another key – $4.50.
or
2. Have the locksmith make what you thought was an expensive house call $45. He would do his magic with something like wax and graphite, return to his van and emerge five minutes later with a key.
Twenty years later, what happens when you lose your car keys? Here’s my story:
Arriving back to our friends’ home in Seattle after our cruise a couple of weeks back, C accidentally discarded our keyset into the recycling bin during an act of neighbourly kindness. By the time we realized they were missing, the recycling had been collected.
In calling the nearest Kia dealership we were educated to the realities of today’s car key. What looks like an innocent key actually has a dual purpose. Embedded in the plastic head is a computer chip that controls the engine immobilizer. The chip must be programmed to your particular car. The car must be present at the dealership for the process. There would be charges for the key blank, cutting the key and programming the chip – about $150 at the dealer plus the fee to tow the car.
It doesn’t end there,The car is in it’s first model year, meaning key blanks are not yet available from generic places such as e-bay. Funnily enough ( another Canadianism) they are not even available at most dealers. The only key blank for our car, in the entire Pacific Northwest, was located thirty miles north in Everett. Ching ching. Then there’s the replacement of the also recycled keyless entry remote and its programming.
To hell with this, says Chuck, Actually he said much more than that, but I won’t get into it. Borrowing our friend’s truck, C drove the three and a half hours back home to Vancouver, returning the next morning with our second set of car keys and a much improved attitude.
They call this progress.
Progress of another kind:
Life's a Stitch 
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