Over the last few weeks, the key fob for my car has gotten most irritating. The battery is dying, so I have to press long and hard to squeeze enough juice out to activate the locks. This is particularly irritating when it’s raining. I have tried shouting obscenities at both key fob and car, in the hope that this will make up for the lack of battery power. It doesn’t. I just get wet.
This isn’t a story about key fobs, per se. It’s about what will, and what will not, survive on the high street. It’s not hard to change a key fob battery. But truth be told, I don’t particularly want to find out exactly how it is done. So I popped into Halfords and asked the girl behind the till if they do key fob batteries. She said they do. She pointed vaguely down an aisle. She mentioned that they can’t pop the new battery in for me. And she returned to her game of Candy Crush.
That prompted my immediate departure. I went on to YouTube and watched a video on how to change the battery. I got a screwdriver and opened it up, noted the battery type and ordered it from Amazon. Two of them for a couple of quid. They came next day. I fitted one of them. My key fob works like new. But I didn’t want to do any of this. I just wanted someone to quickly do it for me, and for me to pay them for doing so.
Retail outlets that fight the good fight based on their range of goods and on competitive pricing have already lost. Amazon is eating them alive. Halfords might as well have a DNR sign up on the front door*. Shops that compete based on expertise and service still have a future. People will always pay a bit extra for that.
This arcade near my home is full of retail survivors. There’s a hardware shop, a clothing alterations shop, several boutique clothing shops, a tiny cinema, a posh cheese shop and a couple of quirky furniture shops.
* Caveat: the lockdown boom in bike sales has been a boon for them. But longterm success? I have my doubts…
The Mexile 
I live in a ‘cheap to live’ area. Retail prices run about 10/20% lower than the stuff offered from Amazon but it is always a quest to find just what I need whereas buying off the internet is just too easy. I pay the extra more often than not. Most of my projects are pretty well planed out before I start, I have time to order and wait.
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It’s usually the other way round here. You’d normally expect to pay less thru Amazon. There’s a caveat to this though. Amazon pricing clearly works on a supply and demand basis, rather than applying a simple profit margin. For example, dumbbells. They’ve been popular during lockdown and have sold old in most places. You can still get the last dregs of the dumbbell supply chain on Amazon, but at quite the premium. More of a premium than I wanted to pay. I waited till stock came back in at the local sports store and paid half the money Amazon wanted.
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Related, but not applicable, Jeremy Clarkson demonstrated on Gop Gear that you can extend the range of a car remote by holding it up to your head. Whether it kills brain cells is yet to be studied. I used that while I was an instructor teaching 16 yr. olds to drive, along with how many teenagers will fit in the trunk of a Toyota Camry. I teased them unmercifully, and loved every minute of it. You have to be entertaining.
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Well I never…. 🤯
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Blast it! It seems that Amazon is killing small businesses. But it is bound to succeed, and really fast if such businesses have workers like that girl playing Candy Crush. Clueless employee with kill a business!
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Adapt and survive…
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Personally I prefer to do it myself, my father in law used to say “there are people for that!” and he paid dearly for the service. Of course I do understand that DIY isn’t for everyone. Likewise many of the children working in these places are equally clueless although replacing the battery in a key fob isn’t rocket science damaging one could cost the store a bundle and I’m sure they have been down that perilous path!
My own father had two left thumbs however his garden was superb, I do well with gravel! On the other hand ewe tube is a very useful resource but sometimes they get it wrong!
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My experience with customer service dates back more than twenty years. That is when I left the US for Mexico. It was not great there. Rude clerks,or no-nothing ones. But than again customers tended to be jerks. Here in Mexico it tends to be the opposite but not necessarily in a good way. One has to be overly explicit when requesting service, and repeat the request at least twice. Not knowing the answer, a clerk might reply that they will have the item, service, or whatever in an tomorrow, next week,or next month. This not acknowledging that they really don’t know. This may be a more pleasant experience but not useful.
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There are plenty of things that I’ve worked out how to do thanks to ‘how to’ style videos on YouTube. I’ve gotten my boiler working a couple of times, and made basic repairs to my car.
But on this occasion, seeing as I had to be in the store to buy the battery, I’d have rather they had just done it for me. I knew I could easily work out how to do it myself, but I could picture my clumsy efforts leaving me with a scratched and dented key fob.
Just in case you’re wondering…yes, I am the ‘proud’ owner of a scratched and dented key fob…
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Living in a 150 unit apartment complex I run into this situation often.
I used to tell friends/neighbours to use their cell phone recorder. Fobs used to operate on one frequency, so it was easy to open the Voice Recorder, start recording, press the Open button on the fob and Save the recording as Open, then repeat for other functions as needed. If you have an older model car this will still work.
In a recent article however I have read that car companies are now using multiple random frequencies so this may not work on newer autos.
I am almost thinking of investing in a kit for fobs/watches and the like to aid some of the seniors here that are homebound. These are easily available on e-commerce sites and the process is usually quite simple for inexpensive type watches.
Order a stack of the most used batteries and just charge for the battery… I am one of those who can’t get out so my time is mostly free. I can fix your pool cue at the same time.
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My car’s only a year old, so I suspect that it’s too new for old tricks. Apple Car Keys is a thing now, but that’s too new for my old car. Maybe my next one…
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