Most Richmond Nissan calls finish in a parking structure rather than a driveway: YVR long-term, the parkade off Grant McConachie Way where the rental agencies sit, the decks under Aberdeen Centre and Richmond Centre, the dealer lots on Automall Drive. Name the deck and read us the marking off the pillar beside the car, and the blank, the Intelligent Key fob and the programmer come to the bay the car is standing in.
Nissan built two key systems, and Richmond parks most of its cars under a roof. The year on the registration and the letter on the pillar settle almost every Nissan call we take here.
The older Nissans on the road here hide their transponder inside the head of a bladed key, and that hidden half is the one that matters. A blade cut to the lock will turn the ignition all day while the engine stays dead, because the chip has to be programmed to the car's ECU before the starter is allowed to do anything. Push-button Nissans drop the blade for the Intelligent Key, sold here as the I-Key: a sealed proximity fob the car listens for as you reach the handle. Which of the two systems a given Nissan uses is settled by the year and the VIN read off over the phone, not by a guess made in the parkade, and the programming gear on the van covers most makes sold into this market.
A Richmond Nissan that will not start is often not a lost-key job at all. The car sits in long-term parking at the airport for a week or two while the owner is away, and the coin cell inside the Intelligent Key goes flat in the meantime. What you find at the bay is a fob that still flashes the indicators next to a start button that does nothing, because the remote side draws very little power and the immobiliser handshake draws more. Push the fob up hard against the start button before you call anyone. There is a backup coil behind it that reads the chip directly, and if the engine catches you need a battery rather than a key. If it stays silent, the fault is in the fob or its programming, and the replacement is supplied and enrolled where the car stands.
The airport structures are large, but they are signed the same way from one end to the other, so a car in there is a short conversation rather than a search. We want the level you are on, the zone letter stencilled on the pillar beside the car, and the make and colour. Most of what lengthens a call to a car parked inside one of the airport structures sits inside the structure rather than on the road: the level, the access barriers, and finding the bay itself. The van comes over the Arthur Laing Bridge from the north or by the Moray Bridge connector when it sets off from east Richmond, and the arrival window is given on the call. The island is covered around the clock on the same footing as the rest of Richmond rather than being treated as an outlying call.
Two things are worth settling on the phone instead of at a barrier. If the car sits behind one of the airport's controlled-access barriers, say so when you book, because that access has to be arranged before anyone is dispatched. And if you are still in the air, the appointment can be set against your landing time with room for customs and the baggage hall, so the work begins when you reach the car rather than when you reach a phone.
The mall decks work the opposite way round from the airport. Aberdeen Centre's parkade is big and its numbering can be genuinely confusing, so what helps is the parkade level, the car's colour and make, and whatever number or letter is stencilled on the pillar or the wall sign closest to it, with the nearest elevator core or stairwell narrowing it further. Under Richmond Centre the useful extra is which mall entrance you walked in from, since that is what orients a driver once they are inside the structure. The City Centre decks are reached on Alderbridge Way or No. 3 Road, and the Brighouse decks on Granville Avenue.
Automall Drive in Bridgeport is the one Richmond address where a car key problem is an ordinary part of the working day, and the calls there divide fairly neatly. A fob whose battery has died while the vehicle sat on the lot. A transponder key that has stopped talking to the receiver in a car being shuffled around the site. And the plain lost key, from dealers and visiting customers alike. Bridgeport is reached up No. 3 Road to Bridgeport Road or on No. 2 Road.
Nissan sits in the common tier of Richmond's vehicle mix, which is why the blanks and fobs ride on the van instead of being ordered in. Covered from stock: the Rogue and Rogue Sport, Murano, Pathfinder, Qashqai and Kicks on the crossover side; Sentra, Altima and Maxima, the Versa and Versa Note, plus the Micra and the Leaf among the cars; and the Frontier and Titan, which out in Gilmore and the East Cambie yards are as often a work truck as a family vehicle. A model outside that list is worth a phone call rather than an assumption, because very recent or unusual configurations get checked for compatibility before a figure is quoted, not after a van has driven out to you.
| Nissan key type | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Transponder key (older, chip only, no remote) | $110–$190 |
| Remote head key (chip + remote in one key) | $150–$260 |
| Flip / switchblade key with remote | $140–$250 |
| Intelligent Key / I-Key smart fob (push-to-start) | $220–$400 |
| Second / spare key at the same visit | $90–$220 |
| All-keys-lost (re-enrol immobiliser via OBD) | $280–$500 |
Every row on that table is one figure covering the part, the cutting and the programming, not an opening price with extras bolted on at the bay. The Intelligent Key row sits high because the fob is an expensive component in its own right. All-keys-lost sits high because the car has to accept a completely new key set from nothing, and that takes longer than teaching a vehicle one more key. The band narrows to a firm number once the year and model are settled on the phone, which happens before a van is dispatched.
All three sit on the registration, and the VIN is stamped again on a plate visible through the bottom of the windscreen. Between them they decide the protocol, the blank that goes on the van, and which band on the price table applies to you.
In a structure that means the parking level, the zone letter or sign nearest the car, and the make and colour. At a house it is the street address. On the agricultural fringe in Gilmore it is the closest intersection, or a landmark in sight of the car.
The blade comes off the machine in the van, and the fob is enrolled at the port under your dash. Then it gets tried: walk-up unlock, the start button, lock and unlock from the fob, the trunk release, then the emergency blade tried in the driver's door lock. The lost fob comes off the car's key list before anyone packs up.
Richmond keeps its dealer row inside the city, so that route is not a long drive here. It is still the slow one. An Intelligent Key normally has to come in on order, which is commonly a wait of two to five business days; the labour is charged at dealership rates; and the whole appointment rests on the car being drivable onto their lot, which is exactly what stops being true once every key is gone. A Nissan stranded on a lower deck under Aberdeen Centre, or out in YVR long-term, has to be towed up and out before any of that can begin, and the tow invoice lands ahead of the key invoice. On the van the fob is already aboard and the enrolment happens where the car already is. One honest limit: a small number of the newest encrypted Nissan platforms are closed to aftermarket programming, and we check your year and model against that on the call rather than driving out and billing for work that was never going to finish.
Away from the structures the Nissan is in a driveway, a private garage or at the kerb, and the job changes shape with it. Steveston fills through the summer, when the parking by the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site, the Steveston Community Centre lot, and the kerbs outside the Moncton Street restaurants carry far more cars than they do in February. The van comes in on Steveston Highway or No. 1 Road. Ironwood Plaza, down where No. 5 Road meets Steveston Highway, is the far south end of the coverage, and slowest to reach during a peak weekend shopping hour. The surface lots at Broadmoor Shopping Centre and Seafair Shopping Centre produce a steadier trickle of the same work.
Gilmore is the one part of Richmond where the Nissan is as likely to be a truck standing on an agricultural property as a car in a driveway, and some of those addresses take a moment to place. Out on the farm roads and private lanes near the Steveston Highway and No. 4 Road corridor, the nearest intersection or a landmark you can see beats a street number every time. The east end is different again: delivery drivers and tradespeople in the East Cambie commercial strips off Cambie Road and Viking Way. For a van standing in one of those yards, the approach gets worked out around the truck traffic instead of driven into it.
Those areas each have a page of their own: Sea Island, City Centre, Brighouse, Bridgeport, Steveston, East Cambie, Ironwood and Gilmore. If the key is shut inside the car rather than lost, start on the automotive locksmith page instead.
A different badge, or a different problem with the same car. Every one of these is the same van and the same licensed technician, working wherever the vehicle already is.