A remote that no longer starts your car gets replaced where the car is standing, not at a counter. We bring the fob, cut the blade to your vehicle and write the new one to the car in the driveway, the parkade or the lot. Name the make, model and year when you call, and the right part is loaded before the truck leaves.
The fob that opens a strata lobby or lifts a parkade gate comes from your property manager, not from a locksmith. Car fobs are the ones we cut and program, and everything that job needs travels on the truck: the fob itself, the machine that cuts the blade, and the tool that introduces the new fob to your car.
What actually goes missing around here is rarely a fob on its own. It is a ring, and a strata ring carries more than people stop to count: a garage fob, a mailbox key, the front door key, and the car fob sitting on top of the three. Fleetwood is where that bundle shows up most plainly, and the story repeats through the Clayton Heights complexes, the Sullivan Heights townhome pocket, and right across Walnut Grove, which runs almost entirely on strata titles. Lose the ring and three separate replacements start at once, on three different clocks. Only one of them is a locksmith job that finishes today, and the car fob is it.
The car fob is the piece we own from end to end. We stock it, cut whatever blade it carries, write it to the vehicle at the kerb, and the missing one stops mattering. The building credential is a different animal. Lobby doors, parkade gates and amenity rooms all hang off a credential system the strata itself controls, which puts that replacement in the hands of the strata manager or the management company, with no shortcut around either. The useful thing to know is the order. Theirs is the slow one, so it should be the first call you make, and the car fob gets booked around it rather than the other way about.
The third piece is the one most people leave sitting there. Your own front door is yours. A suite door or a townhome entry can be rekeyed without asking the council for anything, so the set that walked off can stop opening it the same evening the new car fob is written, on the same stop, while the tech is already standing in the driveway. It is the job we get asked about second and should have been asked about first. Say on the phone that the whole ring went, not just the car fob, and both halves go on the one booking.
| What the fob needs | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Fresh coin cell, where that is all it needed | $10–$25 |
| Writing a fob you already hold to the car | $60–$120 |
| Remote-only fob: part, programming, tested | $90–$190 |
| Remote head key, with the blade cut to your vehicle | $140–$260 |
| Flip key with the blade folded into the fob | $120–$240 |
| Fob for a car that starts on a button | $180–$400 |
| Every fob gone: car re-initialised and enrolled from scratch | $220–$460 |
Where a row supplies the fob, the figure covers the part, any blade cutting and the programming session as one number. Where a row only covers programming, the hardware is already yours and you are paying for the work. Proprietary European and luxury security sits at the top of whichever row it lands in. None of it is quoted blind: the year, make and model turn a band into a single figure on the call, and that happens before anyone drives out. If the whole fault turns out to be a flat cell, the visit becomes a car key battery replacement instead and is billed as one.
Year, make and model decide the part and the band. The address decides the arrival window, and in a coverage area this long those are two separate questions. A Holland Park address at the City Centre edge and an acreage off Jackman Road in Aldergrove are both routine calls, and they are not remotely the same drive.
Nothing is dropped off and nothing is towed. Fob stock, the cutting machine and the programming tools all travel together, so the car stays where it is standing: a side street off Newton Athletic Park, a Scott Road address in North Delta, a Chisholm Street driveway down in Ladner.
Ownership gets checked before any programming begins: a BC licence, plus the car's registration. Then the blade goes on the cutting machine, where there is one to cut, and the new fob is enrolled through the diagnostic port. Nothing is settled until you have locked, unlocked and started the car yourself.
Surrey, White Rock, Langley and Delta all sit inside the service area, and the far half of it is residential in a way that changes how a fob job is booked rather than how it is done. Aldergrove runs east to Jackman Road, with open farmland backing onto the subdivision streets. Tsawwassen is Beach Grove and the English Bluff side streets. Ladner is Chisholm Street and 47A Avenue around the old village core. Walnut Grove reaches back through Yorkson toward Glover Road. South White Rock finishes at Thrift Avenue. Nobody at any of those addresses wants a second visit in the same day.
Which is the practical reason the phone call asks what it asks. Fob work is the one automotive job where the part has to be right before anyone sets off, because the tooling is universal and the hardware is not. At that end of the map a wrong part is not a five-minute correction, it is a second afternoon. Year, make and model, plus which kind of fob is on the ring, and the truck leaves loaded for the car it is actually driving to. Everything else on the automotive locksmith list works the same way out there.
Pick where the car is parked for local response detail and the calls that come up most often there.
The rest of the automotive list, carried on the same truck by the same licensed tech.
Doors, locks, safes and master key work, booked on the number at the top of this page.
Pick-, drill- and bump-resistant cylinders with keys that can’t be copied at the hardware store. Cut, pinned and registered in-shop.
Residential Security Container (RSC) burglary classification: a key-locked security container designed to provide entry…
Car keys are priced by vehicle. Pick what you need and we’ll collect your make, model & year to text you an exact quote.