nearly all new cars come with two keys: a master and a spare. but what happens if you realise the extra crucial doesn’t work? That’s what happened to Paul Bateson, from Halifax, West Yorkshire. and regrettably for Paul, it wasn’t until four years after taking delivery of his new Hyundai Getz that he observed the spare was for someone else’s car.
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“When I got the Getz I simply put the spare crucial in my home safe,” he told us. “The car was due for a service so I made a decision to give the spare to the garage to use – but I knew it was a completely different crucial and didn’t fit.”
Paul went back to the dealer that sold him the car to try to get the right key. He claims he was told his right one couldn’t be found and that it had probably been thrown away after so long.
The dealer did offer him a new key, but only if he paid £172. This was dropped to £127 with ‘free’ encoding after he complained, even though the showroom admitted there’d been an error.
Industry body motor Codes told us that while the dealer is not legally obliged to supply two keys, as this was part of the sale this is what Paul must have got. but the four-year gap does complicate things.