What happens on fitting day in Buckingham

Booking work on a car is harder when you cannot picture what is going to happen to it, so here is exactly what a fitting day in Buckingham involves. This is the whole thing, from the first message to the fitter leaving, so there is nothing to find out on the day itself.

It begins with the registration. That gives us the make, the model and the year, which tells us which of the two systems suits the vehicle. That is a compatibility question rather than a matter of taste — on some cars one is clearly the better fit, and the check happens before we quote rather than after. We come back with which system, what it costs and when we can do it. The price is written down before anything is booked and it is the price on the invoice; nobody rings you halfway through asking for more, and there is no call-out charge whether you go ahead or not.

On the day the car does not go anywhere. The fitter comes to the property — Buckingham itself, Padbury, Maids Moreton, Gawcott or anywhere across the MK18 villages — and works where the vehicle already is. There is no workshop to drive to, no lift to arrange home and no day spent without a car. You keep your keys throughout and you are welcome to watch the entire thing.

Most installations take two to three hours. Trim comes off, the unit goes onto the car's data network, trim goes back. Nothing is cut, drilled or spliced, which is what keeps the system safe on a manufacturer warranty or a lease, and is also what makes it hard to find. Where the unit ends up varies by vehicle and is chosen so that somebody working quickly in the dark does not come across it. We will not put that in writing, and if any installer tells you on the phone exactly where he puts them on your model, that is worth thinking about.

The part that involves you is choosing the sequence. It is entered on buttons the car already has — steering wheel controls, window switches, the pedals — and it can run to twenty presses, though most people settle on something much shorter. The advice we give is to pick something you can do one-handed while putting a seatbelt on, and to avoid anything with a meaning behind it, so no birthdays and no pattern that could be guessed from watching once. After a week it stops registering as a step at all.

Then it gets tested in front of you, and you enter it yourself several times before the fitter goes. That matters more than it sounds. A system nobody has practised is a system that gets switched off within a fortnight, and we would far rather spend ten extra minutes on your drive than have you standing somewhere in the rain wondering why the car will not fire. If anyone else drives the vehicle, get them out for that part as well.

You also get shown the things you will want later — how to change the sequence, and how to put the car into the mode that lets a garage or a valet move it without knowing your code. Ghost II calls that service mode; the CAN Phantom lets you set a timed valet mode from your phone. Learn it before your first dealer visit rather than during it.

The last thing is paperwork. The installation is TASSA-certified on the day, logged against the vehicle by an accredited installer, and the certificate is yours to keep. Send it to your insurer that week — a system they do not know about cannot help you at renewal.

If that sounds like something you would rather simply have done, send us the registration and we will come back with the system, the price and a slot. We cover Buckingham, Padbury, Maids Moreton, Gawcott and the wider MK18 villages.