Renault Key Card and The Law of Sod
We tend to look optimistically into the future and always hope for the best. Don’t get me wrong, we know what we are doing and we are aware of all or most of unexpected things that may happen while providing our services. While Murphy’s law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong (eventually), Sod’s law requires that it always goes wrong with the worst possible outcome. It is suggested that belief in Sod’s law is a combination of the law of truly large numbers and the psychological effect of the law of selection.
No matter the law and the probability nothing could have prepared us for the booking that was made just before Easter. We have received a call from a lady who said that she lost her Renault Scenic key card and needed us to unlock her and supply and programme a new key card. We have quickly agreed on the price and booked a time. One of our teams arrived at given location after around 2 hours and started to work on unlocking her car. It quickly turned out that the emergency lock through which we always unlock vehicles has been tampered with and it is impossible to unlock the Scenic this way. There was no point of trying to unlock the car through the window as the owner has double pressed the locking button which causes the car to go into dead lock mode. The only solution was to break one of the windows.
The owner was so frustrated with her Renault that she wanted to smash the window herself but due to possible complications and liability (the Law of Sod) we haven’t allowed her to do that. Apparently over the years she had nothing but problems with that car. Engine problems, lost key cards, not working key cards, electrical issues you name it… It was getting dark so our guys wanted to get it sorted quickly, the Scenic owner went into her home to call the insurance to arrange a window replacement. Before they even took out the emergency hammer to smash the window few police cars showed up…. Lights flashing, loud sirens and bunch of policemen screaming to get on the floor… Can you imagine what was going through our guys minds? If I was there I would probably end up with a heart attack or at least a stroke. Before the scenic owner realised what was going on our team got arrested. Finally after few minutes which probably seemed like an eternity for them the owner of the Renault Scenic explained to the officers that she was the owner of the car and that she had asked us to ‘break into’ her car. Our guys got released and could go back to their work. I salute them as I don’t think I would be able to continue after such a shock. Later it turned out that it was one of the neighbours who called the police thinking that our team was trying to steal her car. To be honest I don’t know how could they not notice the big Key Card Services graphics on our car or to suspect that anyone will be trying to steal a car while wearing fluorescent yellow tops.
Before we could continue the Scenic owner had to show the police officers her documents and logbook to prove that she truly is the owner. The police also called our office to check if we indeed made this booking, once everything was explained our team could continue their work.
Cutting the story short our guys smashed the window, programmed a new key card swiftly and eventually were free to go in more than one way.
