Ok.... so I went to my dealer and bought a PATS key... it was only about $28 with tax, and they cut it for me too. Seemed like I made out well. At this point I could not understand why so many people were complaining about paying over $80 for a spare key. I took the key home and tried to program it 6 times, following the Ford owner's manual instructions to the letter. I am convinced that I did everything correctly, but the key could not be programmed. I went back to the dealer and told them that they must have given me a bad key, and that I wanted them to either make it work or give me a new key. A mechanic then came out and told me that this would cost $80. He claims that not all new cars have their security key coding abilities enabled from the factory, and if not, the dealer needs to enable this, and it takes time, bla bla bla, and thus costs $80. This of course sounds like balony to me... does anyone know if any of this is true? So, they take the car for about an hour, get the key working, and then tell me that it will indeed cost $80.... they claim that the key was fine, the car itself was fine, and that they needed to reprogram all the keys (the new one and the two originals too). According to the Ford owner's manual, you are supposed to be able to program a new key on your own as long as you have the two original keys (which I have). I wonder if the car itself is officially supposed to have this capability... if so, then as far as I'm concerned, if the car's ability to program keys was not enabled at the factory, then the dealer should have enabled it for FREE as part of the warrantee. However, my guess is that if I complain about it, they will give me some hogwash about the key programming ability not being an official guaranteed "feature" of the car, and thus not covered. Or they may tell me that I simply did not do the programming procedure correctly.... and this is something that I cannot prove one way or the other. I know I did it correctly though. So I guess I am screwed at this point... $87 right down the drain ($80 plus tax). But... I'd like to hear from anyone who has any light to shed on this subject, specifically the part about the dealer telling me that some Ford cars come from the factory "enabled" to program keys, and others do not. Finally, my one extra key cost me, with tax etc, about $115.00. I hope this PATS system is really worth it. But my guess is that the thieves have already figured out ways to get around it. Comments?
- posted
20 years ago