A remote that has gone quiet has usually not broken at all. The coin cell inside it has run down, and Richmond has a way of letting you discover that in the worst spot for it: an airport structure with your bags already off the carousel, or a mall level three floors down at the end of a long day. The right cell comes to the vehicle wherever it is standing, every button gets proved from where you would normally press it, and the fob is put back on speaking terms with the car if it loses the pairing while the case is open.
The cell costs a few dollars and the swap takes minutes. What matters is that nobody has to move the car to get it done, because the vehicles that need this most are the ones that cannot be signalled, found or driven until the swap is done.
Coin cells do not fail on a date. They fade, surrendering a few feet of working range at a time, and most drivers absorb months of that without ever consciously noticing that they have started walking closer before they press anything. What turns a slow fade into a stranded evening is a vehicle nobody has touched for a while, and Richmond produces those in volume: cars left in the airport structures on Sea Island while their owners are out of the country, stock sitting on dealer lots through a slow month, weekend cars that spend six days in a Broadmoor garage. A cell that was merely marginal the last time somebody pressed it is often finished by the next time somebody does.
The code printed on a coin cell is neither a brand nor a grade. It is the dimensions: two digits for the diameter in millimetres, two more for the thickness in tenths of one. CR2025 and CR2032 are therefore the same twenty-millimetre disc at two different thicknesses, which is exactly why the wrong one seats in the holder and looks entirely at home sitting there. Slightly thin, and the contact breaks over the first speed hump. Slightly thick, and the lid never shuts square, which is a patient way of letting water reach the board. Reading that number to us on the call is the quickest route to the correct size arriving aboard. Where the case will not part far enough to see it, the year, make and model gets us to the same place.
| Service | Typical range |
|---|---|
| One remote: cell supplied, fitted and proved | $10–$25 |
| A pair of household remotes at one visit | $18–$40 |
| Smart key cell for a push-to-start vehicle | $15–$35 |
| Cell fitted, with the contacts cleaned and reseated | $20–$45 |
| Cell fitted, with the fob re-enrolled to the vehicle | $40–$95 |
| Fob unresponsive on a fresh cell (diagnosis) | Quoted on-site |
Cells cost a few dollars and always will. What you pay for is the trip: someone arriving with the correct size already aboard, a case tool rather than a screwdriver, and programming equipment in reserve should the pairing let go. A van roll costs the same whether the work runs four minutes or forty, so there is a modest floor on a call that is only a battery. That is why so many people here use the stop for a second thing while the technician is standing at the car, which is what the two-remote line in the table is for. Where the car sits does not move the figure. This is a flat, grid-planned delta city with the Fraser on either side of it, nothing far from anything else, no mountain road and no sailing in the way, so the price reads the same in Ironwood as it does in Bridgeport and you have that number before anyone sets off.
The common tier here drives Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Hyundai and Kia, and on that tier a cell change almost never troubles the immobiliser. It is the rest of the mix we ask about. Lexus and Acura are well represented across Richmond, and so are the German makes, and that is the ground where re-enrolment actually comes up.
A flat fob will not sound a horn or flash a lamp, so the vehicle has to be described instead of signalled. Under cover that means the level you walked down to plus whatever is painted or bolted nearest the bay. In the open, an aisle and the closest storefront. Either way, colour, make and plate.
New cell seated, contacts cleaned, lid down on a seal sitting in its channel. Then the buttons get worked from walking distance rather than with the fob laid on the glass, and on a push-to-start car the ignition sequence is run through before anyone drives off.
Most cars do not care in the slightest. The old cell leaves, a new one arrives, and the fob and the vehicle are still counting from the same place. A minority care a great deal. On older smart key systems and on some of the European makes, a case left open past a certain point is enough for the immobiliser to stop recognising the fob, which leaves you able to open the doors and unable to start anything. Putting that right is programming work rather than battery work, the equipment for it travels with the technician, and a pairing lost while the fob is in pieces on our watch is ours to restore before we go. Richmond is a reason to ask about this up front rather than assume. The Japanese and Korean tier that dominates the roads here rarely gives trouble, but the luxury and European share of this city is genuinely large, and the Richmond Auto Mall on Automall Drive has spent years putting more of it on local driveways. Model year decides the answer on those, which is why it gets settled by phone and not in a parking structure.
The line here is drawn by the fob, not by you. Flip keys and remote heads part along a visible join, usually with a slot moulded in so a coin will do the work, and with the right size in hand there is no reason to pay anybody. Sealed proximity fobs are the other category entirely: glued or ultrasonically welded, no join to exploit, and no forgiveness. What makes forcing one a poor gamble is that the damage almost never shows the same day. A shell cracked off the line, or a lid pressed down onto a seal that has rolled out of its groove, runs perfectly well for a fortnight and then gives up with nothing obvious to blame it on. The other rule has no exceptions: once a fresh cell has gone in and made no difference, the cell was never it.
The Richmond Auto Mall on Automall Drive turns up a steady stream of this work, and only part of it belongs to the dealers. A vehicle that has stood on a lot for a couple of months has a fob whose cell has been quietly draining the entire time, and the person who finds that out is usually whoever takes it for a test drive. Visiting customers supply the rest, parked on a dealer lot with a remote that picked that particular morning to stop answering. Bridgeport is also the quickest corner of the city to get to, because River Road and Automall Drive stay broadly clear at the hours when the No. 3 Road approach to Bridgeport Road has seized up.
The airport lots work in the opposite direction. A car left in the YVR structures while its owner is out of the country for a week or three greets a driver who has just cleared customs with a bag in each hand, and the remote that worked on the way out gives nothing back. Finding the vehicle becomes the first job, and the fastest route to that is the zone letter off the pillar beside you plus the level you are on, because the zone markings through those structures run consistently. Where the car sits on controlled-access airport land, or inside one of the secured industrial perimeters off Miller Road, Grauer Road and Ferguson Road, mention it at booking, since that sort of access gets arranged in advance rather than argued about at a gate.
Aberdeen Centre asks for more than YVR does, because its parkade is large and the numbers are easy to misread. Give the level, the stairwell or elevator core you came down through, anything printed near the bay, and the colour and make. Over at Richmond Centre, naming the mall entrance you walked in from usually gets a technician to within a few cars on its own, while the surface lots up and down No. 3 Road seldom need more than an aisle and a description.
None of which describes most of the city. West of the tower corridor, Richmond is houses. Thompson, Broadmoor, Seafair and Terra Nova are streets of detached homes with driveways and attached garages, so the car stands on its own concrete, nobody is blocked in behind it, and nothing about the call is urgent. Those are worth dealing with on a weekday afternoon rather than on the evening the fob finally quits.
Two edges of the city change the arithmetic again. Gilmore is the one part of Richmond where a fob call is better booked in daylight, because the lots are large and the vehicle is usually standing well back from the road rather than at a kerb. Steveston keeps a calendar of its own. The waterfront lots by the Gulf of Georgia Cannery fill right through the tourist season, and that is reliably the moment chosen by a fob that has been weak since winter.
A dead cell is the gentlest thing that happens to a car key. Everything harder than it is below, and all of it is done at the vehicle.