You’re Locked Out of Your Sports Car … Now What?

on April 27, 2017 at 1:07 am

Let’s say you’re heading back to your beautiful sports car after a long day at work in downtown Denver. It’s December, three degrees Fahrenheit, when you hit the little button on your key fob and nothing happens.

Meanwhile, the snow that was piled high all around making for a beautiful wintry scene is starting to look ominous as you consider standing out in this cold for long hours. Sure, it was foolish to bring your sports car out with the forecast calling for snow, but now isn’t the time to second guess the decisions made earlier in the day when the sky was much clearer.

Maybe you hear that reassuring double beep at last, or maybe it’s the whimper of the beep. When you go to open your car door, nothing happens. You try the button again, and nothing happens. You look through the window and see that the door is still locked. And now it’s snowing harder than before.

Now what? You aren’t ready to call up your Denver locksmith yet? You’re a man – you know you can fix this! And besides that, you don’t want to “waste” money by calling in the professionals. You’ve got this.

OK, so what do you do?

Get a New Battery for the Fob

So you take stock and come to the conclusion that the battery in your key fob is just dead. If you’re near a shop, you might decide to just walk inside and buy another battery. But what if you aren’t anywhere near a shop? Do you call someone to pick you up and take you to the shop? Do you hop on a bus? Do you walk until you find a shop?

Or say that you are near a shop and do find the battery that you need. What happens when it doesn’t work? The battery isn’t actually the problem. Something is wrong with the fob, or something is wrong with the door. There’s no MacGyver-ing this one. Your tools are at home, and would you really know how to fix a key fob anyway? Plus, you’re not about to try and break through a window on your precious sports car. What if you broke it?

What’s next?

Call Your Girlfriend or Wife

OK, fine, you’ll just call your girlfriend, wife, partner, friend, or other reliable emergency contact to help you out. They’ll bring the extra key you’ve got stashed away, and you’ll get on the road. This is why you have your smartphone on you at all times – for emergencies just like this one.

Then the phone rings and rings on the other end. You call, but no one answers. So much for that constant communication, right? Cell phones are only useful if they are actually used. Someone has their ringer turned to silent or is screening their calls, and it’s just not your lucky day. You go through every person in your list who could bring you a key, but you don’t reach anyone.

What do you do?

Call Roadside Assistance

Right, so you pay for that roadside assistance plan just for things like this. You pick up your phone and give the company a call. What’s that? Oh, the person on the other end is telling you that your membership is not current. You vaguely remember a bill sitting on the bottom of that stack on your table. It didn’t really seem worth it at the time, especially since you hadn’t used the service all of last year.

Add up that monthly payment over the course of the year … exactly how much did you pay for a whole lot of nothing? And now that you really do need the service, you can’t get that money to pay it forward.

What to do?

Call the Locksmith

You have no other choice; you need to call the locksmith. It doesn’t mean that you’re less of a man because you couldn’t crack the problem yourself. When a key fob goes wrong or a lock is broken, only a trained professional should take on the job. These aren’t like directions – you don’t have an inherent man sense of how to do these things.

The locksmith will come and fix your lock or give you a new fob quickly so you can get back in your car and back on the road before news of your unmanly predicament can spread. Then you can make an appointment to get a few copies made and stash them with people who actually pick up their phones. And you can put that locksmith number on your speed dial for the times that your lock breaks and you need the experts to get you on the road again.