Cautionary tale of Keyless Entry (subtitled 'Is there a fault')

My RRE is a Prestige SD4 with a host of extras including Keyless Entry. I've found this most appealing and engaging until last weekend ...

I returned from holiday and at the airport caught the bus to the long term car park. Walking with my wife towards my RRE, with suitcase and briefcase in hand I went to the boot end of the car and pressed the open tailgate button. Tailgate opened and I put the suitcase and briefcase into the boot (next to a cardboard box kept in there with a variety of bits and pieces). Inside my briefcase was my RRE Keyless Entry fob/key plus mobile phone. My wife also had her phone in her handbag in the suitcase (a la Ryanair travel!).

I pressed the button to close the boot, it closed and then in the time to walk from the back of the car to the driver's door (my wife was examining the bird poo on the passenger side) we heard a click. I tried to open the driver's door but it remained locked, ditto all of the doors including the boot. We had no additional key on us (the other being at home in London), no mobile phones, no house keys (being with the RRE key) and confused as hell how the Keyless Entry was not allowing us into the car.

The car park had an on-site AA patrol who looked and agreed it was locked. They phoned Land Rover Assist who said you need another key to get in and refused to loan us a car to get home and back with the spare key (because 'it was a self-inflicted problem of locking you keys in your car' meaning they didn't understand the issue). The AA said they could 'wedge' the door open and put in a wire to push the Start button and this, according to LR Assist, may force the Keyless Entry to work. This quickly proved that it would damage the car so we didn't go any further.

Cutting a long story short I had to go back to the airport, hire a car, drive 100 miles home, pick up the spare set of keys, drive back to airport and return hire car, get the bus to the car park and then drive home again. Several hours and £60 of car and petrol costs. So, what went wrong if anything at all?

To try and work out why I was locked out of my car on the following day, Sunday, I put my key fob into the boot and closed the boot (using the close button on the boot). Ten seconds later I heard a 'beep, beep' and the boot opens. This happened 3 times out of 3 and is what I thought should occur. I can only conclude that for my 'lock-out' situation there is either: a blind spot in the car; or that the key fob was between other items that blocked a signal; or that my mobile phone or tele-peage fob caused an issue (unlikely as these are ever present in the car and all works); or that there is a unknown sequence of events/undiagnosed fault with Keyless Entry.

I also consider that LR Assist was less than helpful (all done via the AA guys who were very good and tried to be as helpful as possible).

Has anyone experienced this issue before? I am now confused on how keyless Keyless Entry really is. Trying to understand Keyless Entry I thought that if the key fob was in or near (1 to 2 steps?) the car it was recognised and the car was unlocked. If this is not the case I'd like some explanation of how it works because it appears to me that I should never, ever leave the key fob in the car. You have been warned!

Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome otherwise it looks as if my RRE will have to visit the dealership again (after last visit for a main console failure/issue) which will be twice in three months. Not the start I expected from this relationship.

sounds like a glitch in the car to me. i would write a formal letter to land rover and demand the reimbursement for the costs incurred and also to point out that LRA was as good as useless.

i had a situation which involved a pothole, a subsequent punctured tyre and damaged rim. being in australia, i subsequently found out that michelin australia had no plans to bring in the 20 inch tyres that came along with the car. i had to purchase new a new rims and replacement tyre (both which were covered by rim and tyre insurance - highly recommended!!). on top of that, i had to purchase another new tyre (2 new tyres in total) as i had to run same tyres on each axle. contacted land rover and was fobbed off saying that it wasn't their problem. anyway, i paid for the extra tyre, scanned the receipt and sent it off to land rover with a nasty letter demanding reimbursement and a 14 day timeframe to respond. 5 days later, i received a phone call saying that land rover are refunding the cost of the tyre to me based on "good will" and 3 days later, a cheque arrived.

goes to show that without written complaints, the guys at LRA won't act. i'm almost positive that you'd get your money back or hop on to the local tv station and voice your problems for the 6 o'clock news!

mpw - the very same thing happened to my Husband and his RRS. He approached his car, opened the boot and placed his sports bag (with keys inside) into the boot, then pressed the button to close the boot. He walked around to the drivers door, tried to open it but it was locked. He returned to the boot thinking he would get the keys out of his sports bag but that was also locked.

Luckily he wasn't that far from home and he did have his phone on him, so I had to take the spare key to him. It went into the dealership but they could not replicate the problem and he was told it was a 'glitch'.....
I do know that if I open the boot first, the doors do not unlock at the same time, if I then close the boot and walk away the alarm beeps again to let me know the car has re-locked the boot. I wouldn't expect this to happen if the keys were anywhere in the car?!?!?

I would most definately complain to LR and fully expect all costs to be re-imbursed at the least. Good luck!

Ali.

The tailgate can be opened without unlocking the rest of the car - I open the tailgate alone routinely when shopping and then when I close it, it does what it is supposed to do at that point and locks so as to secure the car. I then take the shopping trolley back, continue shopping elsewhere etc knowing the car is locked.

If I had opened the doors, there would be no automatically locking feature when accessing the boot....

I suspect that what happened to you might not be a glitch but more something to do with the fact that unless you universally unlock the car via the doors, the boot will lock as designed.

Of course, given the keys are within the required distance from the locks to enable unlocking, it doesn't explain why you simply could not just touch the door handle as per usual to unlock - but maybe this is intentional and that the keys have to be outside the vehicle to work...dunno...need to have a play and try! Interesting.

In the manual - Page 14 - With an exclamation mark......

" The Smart key may not be detected if it is placed within a metal container or if it is shielded by a device with a back lit LCD screen such as a smart phone (uncluding laptop bag), games console etc."

Am always wary of placing it witin the depths of a sports bag even as the phone would probably be there too. Am in the habit of keeping keys about my person just like I would a normal set of keys. The keyless is not a protection for accidentally locking your keys in the boot for which you are using a switch (not keyless) to close and not the remote.

Sorry.....don't think there'll be any mileage for you on this one but. Good Luck if you try.

ChuckieB

Thanks for the heads up on the manual contents. I'll read and see if this could be a possible cause. Perhaps having a phone in the same bag as the key fob while the bag was between a cardboard box and suitcase nullifies the signal. I'll see if I can replicate the situation.

(28-05-2012 12:34pm)ChuckieB Wrote:  In the manual - Page 14 - With an exclamation mark......

" The Smart key may not be detected if it is placed within a metal container or if it is shielded by a device with a back lit LCD screen such as a smart phone (uncluding laptop bag), games console etc."

Am always wary of placing it witin the depths of a sports bag even as the phone would probably be there too. Am in the habit of keeping keys about my person just like I would a normal set of keys. The keyless is not a protection for accidentally locking your keys in the boot for which you are using a switch (not keyless) to close and not the remote.

Sorry.....don't think there'll be any mileage for you on this one but. Good Luck if you try.

I had exactly the same problem with my Porsche 911 when I closed the front boot lid with the keys inside after opening it remotely but not opening the car door. The car automatically relocked itself and I was stuffed. I happened to be in a hunting lodge high in the Black Forest miles from anywhere on a Friday evening. No money, passport, driver's licence, clothes. Nothing. Fortunately, I was able to persuade my wonderful neighbour Carole to fly out the next day on the last available seat on the only flight to Zurich with the spare keys and someone to pick her up from the airport. Otherwise, I would have waited until Wednesday to get a new key from Porsche (and so release the person I was blocking in) or else I would have had to take an angle grinder to the front of the car to cut open the boot.

£60 is cheap. That mistake cost me £500.

The issue is that if the doors are not opened after an unlock, it's treated as an accidental unlock (this is what Thatcham approval is all about) and the car relocks auotmatically if the doors are not opened. Opening the boot does not count as "opening the doors".

The 911 doesn't have keyless unlocking but the RRE should have detected the key inside the car. One potential issue is that airports are awash with high frequency radio energy and might have swamped the car so that it could not detect the key.

In Mercedes' first incarnation of keyless go, they used to give you a credit card sized fob which had no other physical means of getting into the car. If the car could not detect the signal from the car, you were stuffed and that included the battery going flat in the car. They soon dumped the card after people coming back from holiday could not get in to their cars, partly because of a poor battery management system, high static current drain and the radio effect. Their "keyless" keys now have a physical key in, just like the LR keys so that you have a mechanical way of getting in if electronics lets you down.

(28-05-2012 01:42pm)mpw Wrote:  ChuckieB

Thanks for the heads up on the manual contents. I'll read and see if this could be a possible cause. Perhaps having a phone in the same bag as the key fob while the bag was between a cardboard box and suitcase nullifies the signal. I'll see if I can replicate the situation.

I'm guessing its as ChuckieB suggests. When I picked mine up last week, they specifically mentioned this in the handover. There are a load of reception points around the car - but if the key is obscured by a mobile phone or a laptop it can 'mask' the key from the detectors.

Sorry you had such an inconvenient way of finding out!

Wouldn't you expect though, that if the car detected the keys from inside the briefcase on approach and unlocked the boot that it would then also detect that the fob was actually inside the boot (still inside the briefcase) and therefore the boot would remain unlocked Or have I missed the point?!!? I am feeling a tad blonde today!

Luckily I always have my fob in my pocket/hand and have therefore never come a cropper (so far!!!)...

Ali

Sorry to hear about the grief, last thing you need on way home from a trip.

Definitely sounds like something was interfering with the signal, If you can't reproduce it at home using your phone or laptop with it then was probably something in the airport as mark says, could be anything, radar, police comms etc if strong enough will wipe out a little transmission from your tiny battery powered key fob, would be interesting where the detector in the boot is though. As also said if you don't unlock the car and just open the boot the car will not unlock the doors, so if the radio signal is lost then as far as the car is concerned the car is locked.

Other than the AA supply you with a car there is not much they can do either to be fair to them, if they had ways to open your locked car then so would any thief.

I can understand the way airport security is these days you feel more obliged to place keys in your bag securely than put them into a plastic x-ray tray to disappear out of sight while you go through the security gate, I've lost stuff in those plastic trays while being searched (including keys!!!).

Even for non keyless entry it still doesn't stop you leaving them and locking them in the boot though, so we could all succumb to this issue!

£60 sounds like a cheap lesson to be honest, the time and hassle was probably worse, just shame you had to learn it that way, but thanks for sharing for others to hopefully save themselves from an awful situation.