Just bought another used car & I thought I got a real bargain. It is exceptionally well looked after, super clean etc. (detailers deserve a medal I suppose).
Upon getting home I realised that the second key only unlocks but doesn't lock the doors. Must be a fault in the little motherboard. Anyhow, called the spare parts head office to get a new spare. "No problem" I was told & a couple of minutes later I was told $852.- plus $25.- cutting Plus postage !
Pew ! I expected it to be a third of that. Anyhow, called several car locksmiths & a few of them said "No problem, just bring the car in & we'll cut a new key".
Now, living some 400km from the nearest agent makes this a real challenge. Why does Govt allow such exploitation ? One would think the manufacturers could provide a key's PIN & ID to the buyer so it could be obtained without having to drive so far ?

Not sure why no one has answered your point is well made
Here, 40 klm from a shop, a key cutter could cut a second key for about twenty bucks
Not one that would be press button but would open every thing
Just about to buy second hand 4x4 mine is a bit rough but drives great,rego however has become a trap
Thieves find faults that do not exist, then charge you the earth before giving you the paper work to re register

I have duplicated keys a few times over the lifetime of my car, I think it costed $5 or $7.

I do my best to take care and preserve my 1992 car forever - no computer, no motherboard, no dependence on any head office, any local mechanic would do. If only I could buy a new one like this!

I am told that in new cars, passengers do not even have a knob to open their door - a jail on wheels with no way to open the door mechanically and if something happens to the battery or electronics, only the fire brigade could extricate an elderly passenger from her back seat who is not athletic enough to climb over to the driver's seat. Just imagine an accident knocked down the computer or battery and jammed the driver's door...

https://www.choice.com.au/transport/cars/accessories/articles/replacing-modern-car-keys

Belly & Yuyutsu,
Cheers for your very valid comments. The above exposes the entrapment tactics of the modern car industry.
If the link doesn't work try without the s in https.
In my area I'll need to drive 400-600km each way to get a spare car key & if I lose or ruin my key I'll have to have the car transported that far to get a new key cut. This would cost thousands because even the insurance policy has a maximum of 100km towing.
This is nothing short of criminal entrapment & Govts must interfere. There is no technical reason other than total consumer exploitation that a car needs to be taken to a specialised service centre for a new ignition key. The computer in a car could have a PIN # to be driven but that'd not make the insane profits these companies are used to. If you live within 100km of a service centre then yes, it's acceptable but what of those people living way out in the country ? For them it is literally unaffordable to have a later model car. To add insult to injury, my near $900 car key is not even rain-proof ! In this day & age a car key should be environment resistant & have a gps locator. If that;s not possible then don't have a computerised car key ! The racket needs to be hit on the head !

Dear individual,

Join the long list of people who have to experience the endless product defects in what we buy nowadays. The only thing that will make people who sell us goods and services toe the line is having statutory agencies regulating transactions. But according to politicians, bureaucrats and business people self-regulation takes care of itself. Now if you tell me they are lying to us I might promise to stop saying you are suffering from paranoid delusion.

New cars can be great. Our last new car, my ladies Mazda 2 did 187,000 kilometres without needing more than a couple of light bulbs.

They can of course be garbage, my last company car spent 3 of it's first 16 months sitting at the dealers waiting for warranty replacement parts to come from France. It was French of course, so what else would expect.

My car is a 1980 Triumph TR7, a 2 seater sports car. 20 years ago, when the kids stopped riding horses, I bought 2 of these, not going, for the princely sum of $1200. One had a very good body, so I spent 2 years fitting all the best parts to that. With a few new parts, & a home spray paint job, I had a car that looked pretty good, & ran beautifully for under $5000.

It is the nicest car to drive I've ever had, & has been very reliable. 4 years ago after 78,000 kilometres I decided to do it up big time. I rebuilt the engine & brakes, replaced every bit of rubber on the car. I counted 127 paint chips on my home paint job, so gave it an expensive bare metal professional paint job.

Big Mistake.

It still only owes me $15000, so still cheap motoring, but is now so beautiful I won't park it in shopping centre car parks, so I enjoy it less often, driving my 17 year old shopping trolley hatch instead.

The moral, get an old car you like, & do it up. I know a couple of old world mechanics, who still can, & don't charge the earth if you are not mechanical.

I know a lot of people who would pay a lot of money for a new 1960s car. I'll have a 68 Monaro thanks.

My 2003 Toyota Hilux twin cab ute has no computer, no electronic door locks and a spare set of keys from Bunnings was twelve dollars odd.

It's also manual, so in the event of starter failure or a flat battery, it can be push-started, which is a big consideration in a country vehicle.
No crank handle unfortunately but, if in dire straits, a back wheel can be jacked up and used to start the engine.

Well spend under ten thousand on a car, Suzuki 4x4 usually, have spent much more when working
Keys, yes get the plain type every time the others are too high priced
Indy yes understood your distance troubles bit hard to take the key and car back if it does not work Hasbeen interesting and understand you loving that car ex workmate long time ago completely restored one and drove it with pride until he died

It is heartening to hear your collective stories, and most of all, your reluctance towards new cars.
Firstly you are all correct that the govt is in concert with the big car companies, from the taxes to the registration fees.
I forget the tax component of cars these days, but I can only compare with what I know, and that is two of my cars are Rollers and a Range Rover. Well I can confirm that I would have to be one of the wealthiest men in Australia or brain dead to buy a new Rolls.
The top of the wazza is over one million dollars.
The top Rangey is over two hundred thousand.
Now I know that the Roller lands in Aus fro around six hundred odd the other six hundred is mostly import agent mark-up, the tax component is nothing compared to these greedy bastards.
What people are not told, and is very worth knowing, you will look at your new car in a different light after this, is, the price you pay has nothing to do with the cost of the car, it has everything to do with these bastards simply judging what the most the buyers of that car are prepared to pay for it, in other words, extortion.
Cars all have the same basic component structure,ie; an engine, transmission, four doors, four wheels, and interior.
Where they differ is in the bling and toys.
Now these days even those things have become common pace so that nearly every car has them, thereby bringing the cost of the cars back into a level playing field.
So what makes the prices so different and varied to some rediculous extremes.
The importer and how much he thinks he can screw out of the buying public, not the cost of the car plus a mark up.
The word extortion is appropriate.
In the recent govt review into second hand car imports was severely compromised and influenced by lobbyists, one of the companies was Porsche, because they are one of the biggest thieves in the market.

cont...............

It becomes more obvious when one considers that our so called, 'luxury cars' are all common cars in their country of origin.
Heck, in some countries the Mercedes Benz is used as taxi's, not just in Germany.
Merc's, BMW's, Jaguar, and the list goes on, they all cost at least two thirds what they cost here.
And totally slap anyone in the face if they suggest that it's because of the shipping cost because we are so far away.
Lies, all lies!
Apparently money justifies all manner of lies.
The car industry is at the head of the dishonest list.
As for the key saga, the excuse given is that the keys are coded to the car and are in essence a mini computer, so because of this they are more susceptible to failures than the old fashioned no electronic keys.
The joke about all this is that apparently these new tech savvy kids today can now get into and make off with your car with a computer or similar electronic device.
Once upon a time a thief had to get their hands dirty to steal a car.
Not any more.
I can only shudder at the thought of what we are heading into with the introduction of the ELECTRIC car.

A mate of mine checked on the price for a replacement key for my model car in US & found that my $900 key in Australia costs $65 Us over there.
Pretty hefty postage to Australia ? Nah, sounds more like taxes & middlemen to me.
It literally has become blatant extortion here.
We really should re-start our own car industry again instead of being slaves to the importers of deliberately over-computerised vehicles that provide them with on-going fees income.

indy even ebay is worth trying I have used online shopping to buy parts and it is very cheap
Clutches near half of prices asked in shop
Also import radio gear from all over the world save hundreds

I agree with many of your comments concerning 'doing-up' one's favourite car. The only thing I can add to the discussion, never buy an ex. police vehicle despite how low the mileage may be on the odometer, and how well kept it might appear. They usually put them out to public Auction around the 50,000km mark?

I can only advise you why one should not purchase any ex-police vehicle as you're purchasing a heap of trouble. The only real exception is an ex. police pursuit motorcycle, which is carefully serviced and most have never been dropped. Former Command vehicles aren't too bad either.

Most former patrol M/V's are utter crap and have been thrashed endlessly. Easily detectable, by the worn front seats at the lumbar area, bearing the marks, scratches, and blemishes, caused by the members' accruement belts. And the various body apertures that have been drilled that previously held communication antennas. Most 'urgent duty' warning lights & 'Police' signage, are fitted to removable roof racks, evidence of which, can be easily detected by the marks left by the anchor points around the roof gutter.

Check behind the rear seats, for all manner of contraband and crap that's been surreptitiously tucked down the back of the seats, and remember, the number of drunks who've been arrested and vomited all over the seating area as well. The stink is hard to remove.

Good advice o sung wo, in fact country cop a mate, used to drive his general duties ute on to the beach,to fish with me
Great bloke good cop, but zero respect for the car
Long moved on so ok to say it was airport beach at Evans Head northern NSW be up there soon for a couple of days taunting the Taylor on that beach

Hi there BELLY...

I hope you have a marvellous break up there in beautiful Evans Head. Should I send a message to all the Taylor to stay in deep holes, while you and others fish for them? Enjoy yourself old friend.

indy even ebay is worth trying I
Belly,
Unfortunately, that doesn't work anymore these days. You see, each car has its unique Pin Code which the manufacturers do not divulge to the buyer of the car. The owner is required to take the car to a Service agent for that brand car where a new key has to be programmed for THAT car. If your car breaks down a thousand miles from the nearest service agent then you have to get the car transported at your cost. I called an automotive locksmith for a spare key this morning & was told I have to present the car to program the key. $256. I can get a spare for $900 from the dealer/agent by mail because they have the Pin code. Now, I have to juggle the viability of driving 350km each way to the locksmith or order from the agent for more than three times the cost.
If this is not extortion than I really don't know the meaning of the word.
Enjoy Evans Head, great place, used to go scuba diving there. I was there the day they lost an F111.

Never fished there, but in my younger days I reckoned Evans Head was about the best body surfing beach I'd found.

Be careful what you do with those Taylor. There was a bloke living on a little Hood 23 fiberglass yacht at Cammeray Marina Sydney in the late 60s. He was a very good fisherman, & would often go out early on weekend mornings, & come back with a heap of Taylor. He would wander up & down the marina with a bucket full, giving them to all who wanted some.

Now the Hood was a small boat without a proper marine toilet. It had an enclosure between the V berths up forward, with a toilet seat, & a bucket under it in the enclosure.

At a marina barbeque one night this bloke mentioned his boat had such a toilet, with a "universal" bucket. The next time he tried to give away some of his Taylor from his bucket, strangely no one wanted any.

It took a couple of days walking the marina with his fish in a bucket, & another bucket which he assured everyone was his "universal" bucket, & even them some people were right off Taylor for life.

Sorry if this is too much information, but I thought it was quite funny, particularly as I don't eat fish, other than Spanish Mackerel.

I have a whinge on car parts. Westfield car parks have high concrete
stops to prevent you going too far into a park.
Well they broke the plastic air dam under my Volvo.
So I rang the local dealers, $450 for a bit of plastic !!
I got onto ebay and the cheapest was a dealer in the US, US$95.
So I ordered it. Back came an email; Volvo does not allow sales to Australia.
My first experience of GARO; The Great Australian Rip Off.
Got a buying company in US to order it and forward it.
Got it landed for $200.

Then electric cars came on the scene. Well the Nissan Leaf sold for
US$27,000 plus a bit in the US, About equivalent AU$32000 in UK.
but $51500 here. About $20,000 ripoff. I priced one in UK and freight
at that time was less than $2000 plus couple of odd hundred dollars.
Then Nissan had trouble selling at that price and many took years to sell.
When they then brought in another batch, they thought they had trouble
selling them last time, so they increased the price to $57,500 !

Oh another story, my Volvo had a variable airflow device for the engine
intake. The butterfly valve had a carbon potentiometer to feed back to
the engine computer. Well it appears these units gave lots of trouble
causing erratic engine speeds.
When I described my trouble over coffee at the end of the local radio
club meeting, they all laughed when I mentioned the carbon potentiometer !
We all knew how stupid it was to use a carbon pot in a job like that.
Why didn't Boshe know that ?
Local dealer wanted $1200 to fit a new one.
Google put up a Canadian Company that would sell me a rebuilt one
with a Hall Effect transducer instead of a carbon pot.
Sent it out with a return documentation for my old one for AU$300.
One hour job to swap them over.

I just would like to know why things are so expensive here when the freight is only a few Dollars to come to these shores ? Who's really ripping us off ? The Govt or the middle men ?
If it's not produced here than don't penalise us if we get it from overseas !
I hope this Govt shows some decency & puts a stop to these rorts. Alternatively, re-start the Australian car industry by building basic, affordable cars. If people want fancy cars to show off how much they managed to borrow, they can pay import duties but leave us out of it !

Local freight is one of our real problems individual. To match competition I had to switch from local production of a number of water/energy saving chrome plated brass items to Taiwan production.

Some of these items, costing about $10 to make in Brisbane, I could land into my store for as little as $2.00. Surely they should have been cheap in the shops. No way, distribution costs saw to that.

My average delivery cost of these items, considering it would sometimes be a single item, & others part of a multi item delivery made the manufacturing price look silly.

Average delivery cost.
Local store, $6
Sydney store.$8
Vic Store...$12
Perth store &18

Why can they keep costs down in NZ ? I bought a video camera there for $2160AUS several years ago. The same model was over $4000 here, Why ?

Indy, the answer is in the people.
Aussies have been riding a very big high for many years, with a lot of disposable cash, and the govt, the importers, the bureau of stats, in other words everyone who stands to gouge money off the public, do an assessment of what they can reasonably get out of us, and then price it accordingly.
All it means is that Kiwi's are more discerning and more diligent than Aussies.
If the Aussie public was a little more aggressive in their attitude we might get a better deal all round, as it is Aussie guys are turning into snags and neuters, and this is showing in everyday decisions and lifestyle.
Don't kid yourselves, marketing companies and sales departments are forever studying people and social demographics, always thinking up new ways to con and gouge us.
So if the public does not drop this lax, lay back, she'll be right attitude and actually start kicking these guys around, they are going to get screwed even more and still not get it.
And even worse, the govt applauds it.

Not necessarily so ALTRAV.

I buy a number of hobby items from Oz, Hong Kong & the US. Hong Kong does have access to a cheep freight system, organised I believe by their government to help exports. Many of their goods are freight free. Even with this, & Oz suppliers saddled with our very high freight costs, most things are cheaper delivered to my door from the local companies.

US companies sell most things cheaper than either Oz or Hong Kong companies, but often freight to Oz exceeds the cost of the items by a long way.

Individual, GARO, the Great Australian Rip Off !

Hasbeen, not sure of your point.
I agree freight is a killer, but it is also erratic and inconsistent.
By that I mean sometimes it is so cheap to get things from China, it is unbelievable and yet it's true.
I have always known that Aussie freight has been excessive.
It must be when you consider the distances involved.
We have to accept that we are dearer than most other developed countries.
But not to the extent we are being gouged.
Wages must be frozen and not allowed to just keep heading North.
When Aussies get a wage rise, they actually don't, because when a business puts up their wages they offset by putting the costs of the products, so when you think you have more money, you actually don't because the company doesn't just increase the price by the extra they add a little to give themselves a bit of a lift, and that's why we must not push for a wage increase any more.

I was interested in a small , 33kg diesel engine from Perth for $650. Freight $450. I mean, why bother ? Another one from Sydney Ebay was $550, freight $1100. When I called them they said it's because my Post Code is not on their normal delivery list ! If I could pick it up in Cairns (700km drive) it'd only cost $135 ??

Anyhow, that's drifting away from the modern car dilemma. A driver should not have to fork out thousands just because a car manufacturer is allowed to hold us to ransom. In this day & age a car component should be pre-programmed & plug-in. This nonsense of having to get a vehicle transported for hundreds of kilometres costing thousands of Dollars just because of a tiny module has to be reviewed by Govt. If they can deliberately build a problem then they can also be forced to produce a solution !

My point ALTRAV is that it is totally ridiculous that it cost me 6 times the cost of the article to get it to a retailer. This made the total cost of selling the goods so high, that I needed an 8 times cost mark up just to break even with staff & warehouse costs.

The retailer than needed a 40% mark up on my highly inflated selling price. The public were paying about 20 times the manufacturing cost of the article, mostly to cover Australian freight costs.

We land cars off roll on roll off ships very cheaply, but you can bet there are some huge costs from there, that have to be covered. I'm sure there is profiteering, particularly with high price cars, but there are also huge costs in selling stuff in Oz

Hasbeen,

you are not wrong.
I have been importing cars for decades, and I don't need to tell you that between the freight component, the quarantine requirements and so on and so forth, we are being gouged, ripped off, taken advantage of, use whatever words you like, extortion and the list goes on.
We can't let this Grand Theft Auto continue, because it is wrong.
The reason they're doing it is because we are letting them.
Aussies are way too complacent and well off, otherwise they would follow my lead and write to ministers, complain to the govt officers in no uncertain terms, in other words, letting them know they are under scrutinee, and that we are not happy, which will lead to more than verbal attacks if they don't relent.

Earthmoving contractors now leave their machinery up North because it is too expensive to have it pass Quarantine & return freight. They already factor in the cost of the equipment in their quotes. Just check on the prices/costs of northern Govt projects which invariably go to contractors from the South..