2021 Kia Sorento
Key Replacement - Save vs Dealer in Ventura County

2021 Kia Sorento Smart Key Replacement - Fast, Affordable & Professional

It was a July afternoon in Ventura, over in the College area, and she had a full Costco haul sitting in the back of her 2021 Sorento. Frozen stuff. The kind of run you do once a month and do not want to repeat.

She pressed the fob button in the parking lot. Nothing. Pressed it again. Still nothing. The car sat there locked, the sun doing what July in Ventura does, and the dealer told her the earliest they could see her was the following morning.

She called me instead. I was about 20 minutes out.

When I got there, I got the door open and plugged into the OBD port. The fob battery had died, which is the obvious part. The less obvious part was that she had gotten a jump start earlier that week after leaving an interior light on overnight. That kind of voltage drop and spike can interrupt the communication between the fob and the immobilizer, and that is exactly what happened here. The fob was not broken. It was just out of sync.

I pulled the vehicle PIN, reprogrammed the fob through the port, swapped in a fresh CR2032, and walked every button and both door handles before I called it done. Start button, lock, unlock, the works.

From her call to engine running was 44 minutes. The frozen food made it.

She mentioned what the dealer quoted her for a next-day appointment. It was a good chunk more than what she paid me, and she would have lost the groceries either way waiting until the next morning.

BSIS Licensed

LCO#6792

CA Bureau of Security & Investigative Services

NASTF Certified

National Automotive Service Task Force

Fully Insured

Liability & vehicle damage coverage

Google Guaranteed

Verified & backed by Google