A car key job is pinned to wherever the vehicle is sitting, so in Coquitlam the address does most of the work. That can be a gated street in River Springs, an upper Burke Mountain address off Coast Meridian Road, or a numbered stall under a Burquitlam tower. The van brings the blanks, the Intelligent Key fobs and the programmer to the car. Altima, Rogue, Sentra, Qashqai, Micra, Frontier and more.
Two answers decide a Nissan key call before anyone leaves the yard. Which system the car uses sets the part that goes on the van. Whether you still hold a fob that works sets whether this is a second key added to a car that already trusts one, or a full re-initialisation of the immobiliser.
Older Nissans, including the early Altima, Sentra, Versa and Frontier, carry a transponder chip in the head of a bladed key. The blade turns the ignition and the chip answers the immobiliser, which is why a hardware-store copy of the blade will open the door and leave the starter dead. Nissans with push-button ignition use the Intelligent Key instead, badged I-Key, a proximity fob that unlocks on approach and starts the engine from a dash button. Every I-Key still hides a mechanical emergency blade, and on many models the matching door keyhole sits behind a small cap on the driver's handle. That blade is what gets you into the cabin when the fob has gone flat, so we cut and test it whenever we supply a fob.
Whether a working fob still exists changes both the clock and the price band. With one in hand the car already trusts a credential and a second one is a short registration. With none, the immobiliser has to be taken back to a blank state, and that clears every key the car ever knew. Worth saying out loud on the phone: if the missing fob surfaces in a coat pocket a week later it will not start the car again, and putting it back is a second visit.
The van stocks blanks and fobs for the Altima, Rogue and Rogue Sport, Sentra, Versa and Versa Note, Qashqai, Kicks, Murano, Pathfinder, Frontier, Titan, Leaf, Maxima and Micra. Pickups and full-size vans are covered for most major makes, so a Frontier or a Titan is no more of a problem than the sedan beside it. If your model is not on that list it is very unlikely to be an obstacle. Give us the year and we will confirm the part and the programming route before we quote you anything.
| Nissan key type | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Transponder key (older, chip only, no remote) | $110–$190 |
| Remote head key (chip + remote in one key) | $150–$260 |
| Flip / switchblade key with remote | $140–$250 |
| Intelligent Key / I-Key smart fob (push-to-start) | $220–$400 |
| Second / spare key at the same visit | $90–$220 |
| All-keys-lost (re-enrol immobiliser via OBD) | $280–$500 |
The spare row is the only one that assumes another row is already happening at the same car. Proximity fobs and all-keys-lost work sit at the top of their bands because the fob itself costs more and re-initialising an immobiliser takes longer than adding a key to a car that already has one. The range gets narrowed on the phone as soon as we have the year and model, and the number we say on the call is the number on the invoice.
The year and model tell us whether the car takes a bladed transponder or an Intelligent Key. The VIN, off the registration or the plate at the base of the windscreen, lets us pull the right blank before the van is loaded. That is also the point where you get the range.
A Nissan that will not start is not meeting us halfway, so we take the address seriously. Building address plus stall level if it is under a tower. House number and nearest cross street if you are on a park-edge street where app routing gives up.
We cut the blade, register the chip or the proximity fob to your car, then actually run it: walk up to the door, start it from the button, lock it, unlock it, open the trunk. Nothing is packed away until that all works and the old key is out of memory.
The split is about access more than skill. A dealership orders the fob in, often 2–5 business days, prices its own programming labour, and needs the car on its lot, which for a Nissan that will not start means paying for a tow before the key work has even begun. A mobile locksmith carries the fob and the tool and does the registration where the car already sits. The one thing the dealer has that we do not is manufacturer online access, which a small number of the very newest encrypted Nissans still require. If yours is one of them we tell you on the phone rather than driving out and billing you for an attempt that cannot finish.
Both sit above the rest of the city, and that matters more for a car key than for a house call, because the car is not coming down to us. Burke Mountain is the highest residential area in Coquitlam, and its upper streets, the ones branching off Burke Mountain Road and Coast Meridian Road, get winter road conditions the lower city simply does not see. If the hill has changed since you last drove down it, say so when you call. We would sooner put the climb into the estimate than hand you a flat number that ignores it.
Westwood Plateau winds off Plateau Boulevard and off Como Lake Avenue as it climbs, and the golf course parking area is one of the places a fob goes missing on foot rather than in the car. That distinction is worth raising before we dispatch. A proximity fob lost on the course is still a spare-key job as long as the second one is in a drawer at home, and it decides which row of the table above you land on.
River Springs is gated, and it is the one case where a licensed tech with the correct fob already on board still cannot reach your Nissan. We cannot enter a gated community without authorization, so the gate is settled on the phone before anyone drives: either you give us the keypad code, or a neighbour or the strata manager authorizes entry. Through the daytime the gate is usually open and none of it comes up. Once we are inside, some of the internal street layouts are not obvious from mapping apps, so describe the turn to your driveway and we will find you first time.
Cape Horn has the opposite problem, and it is not a gate. A Nissan parked on the streets above the industrial flat and one sitting in a yard off the corridor are two different approaches, so say which before the van is loaded. Traffic on United Boulevard and the Mary Hill Bypass stacks up near the interchange at peak hours, and we would rather fold that into the arrival time than pretend it is not there.
Mundy Park has several entry points, and the parking areas off Hillcrest Street and Gatensbury Street are where a good share of the car calls near Como Lake begin: a walk, a run, a dog, and a fob that is no longer in the pocket it left in. Tell us which lot. A park lot is priced the same as a driveway, and the park-edge streets can be a longer drive than the map distance suggests, so the house number and the nearest cross street beat app routing into a cul-de-sac every time.
People working at or visiting Eagle Ridge Hospital park out on the surrounding kerbs, which puts the car on a public street rather than in a driveway while the key is cut and registered. We take car key work on Guildford Way, on Eagleridge Drive and on the side streets between them, reaching the area east along Guildford Way or up via Pipeline Road. One limit, stated plainly so nobody wastes a call: the hospital's own parking lot is not our jurisdiction. Everything around it is.
A different badge, or a different automotive job. Same van, same licensed tech, same programming done at the vehicle.