Car alarm randomly going off in Toyota Auris

I

ivorystraws

Registered User
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480
Hi,

We bought a Toyota Auris at the end of August from a dealer in north Dublin. We have an ongoing issue where the key fob will set the alarm off randomly when locking or unlocking the car. It can be difficult to turn the alarm off and it can go on again some minutes later, even whilst driving.

I've made the dealership aware of this and they originally said that the issue wouldn't be covered under warranty and they suggested that I buy a new battery for the key fob, which I did. This didn't help resolve the issue. I've raised this issue again with the dealership recently and they said that they would need to book the car in for a day so their technicians can carry out diagnostics on the alarm system. Again, they said that they couldn't guarantee that this would be covered under the warranty.

Has anyone had experience of such a problem with a Toyota Auris? Should I have to potentially pay for an issue with a car that I bought a few weeks ago?

Any helpful suggestions would be welcome at this point.
 
I just googled "Toyota Auris alarm problem" and there seem to be quite a few reports of this issue. Maybe worth checking first?
 
Leo said:
Toyota Ireland may not choose to reimburse their time / materials in investigaing this, but you should not have to pay.
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Yes, I 100% agree with this. This issue does not relate to the warranty as the car was sold to us with that fault i.e. the Toyota dealer sold us a car that's defective. That's the reason why this complaint has been raised with our bank, with SIMI and with the competition and consumer protection commission i.e. the Toyota dealership is obliged to repair the fault under the 'Sale of Goods' legislation.
 
Some key fobs have a panic alarm embedded whereby if you press & hold a button or combination of buttons it sets off the alarm in the event of an emergency / personal attack. Is the User pressing the fob button for extended periods to "make sure" the car is locked or perhaps mashing 2 or 3 button at one time mistakenly?

Try opening all the doors & boot & all the windows & check for obstructions or warps in the doors that may prevent firm closing.
Does this car have after market wind deflector fitted? I have seen a previous case where these were holding the window off slightly resulting in intermittent false alarms.
 
Well in that case
ivorystraws said:
It's a 2013 Toyota Auris and yes, we bought it from a Toyota dealer in north Dublin.
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In that case I'd leave them sort it.
An Auto Electrician will sort this out and it's likely they use a local specialist. They just don't want to spend the money. Very little money for them.
 
Try removing the alarm fuse for about 1 minute then replace it. Sometimes a reboot is all that is needed. The alarm might sound when the fuse is removed, this is normal.
 
ivorystraws said:
Yea, I've done my fair share of googling but to be honest, it's not helped much.
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Several of them mention different sensors in the boot and or under the bonnet that may be stuck/faulty. Others mention using the manual key to avoid the problem. Others mention the possibility of some alarm backup battery (not the fob battery) or the car's main battery being depleted.
 
Horatio said:
Some key fobs have a panic alarm embedded whereby if you press & hold a button or combination of buttons it sets off the alarm in the event of an emergency / personal attack. Is the User pressing the fob button for extended periods to "make sure" the car is locked or perhaps mashing 2 or 3 button at one time mistakenly?

Try opening all the doors & boot & all the windows & check for obstructions or warps in the doors that may prevent firm closing.
Does this car have after market wind deflector fitted? I have seen a previous case where these were holding the window off slightly resulting in intermittent false alarms.
Click to expand...
The key fob is a standard Toyota one (as we have another Toyota Avensis).

This happens when attempting to unlock or lock the car. It can lock fine but then the alarm can go off when unlocking it. There's no pattern to it, it's really odd.
 
AlbacoreA said:
Well in that case


In that case I'd leave them sort it.
An Auto Electrician will sort this out and it's likely they use a local specialist. They just don't want to spend the money. Very little money for them.
Click to expand...
Exactly my thoughts, they just don't want to spend the time or money. I've submitted a dispute with my bank over the deposit so if the dealer continues to refuse to pay, I'll go somewhere else that can help to resolve it and use the refunded deposit to pay for it.
 
bstop said:
Try removing the alarm fuse for about 1 minute then replace it. Sometimes a reboot is all that is needed. The alarm might sound when the fuse is removed, this is normal.
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Yea, I could try that. I've no knowledge of how to do that so I'll just check online. Ideally though, I'd prefer if an expert could just check the car out and resolve whatever the problem is.
 
ivorystraws said:
Exactly my thoughts, they just don't want to spend the time or money. I've submitted a dispute with my bank over the deposit so if the dealer continues to refuse to pay, I'll go somewhere else that can help to resolve it and use the refunded deposit to pay for it.
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We had a similar problem with a different make of car and a recommended auto electrician solved it in 10 minutes for €40.
 
ClubMan said:
Several of them mention different sensors in the boot and or under the bonnet that may be stuck/faulty. Others mention using the manual key to avoid the problem. Others mention the possibility of some alarm backup battery (not the fob battery) or the car's main battery being depleted.
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Yea, I've seen all those replies. Even if a sensor is stuck or faulty, how would I find it and why would it happen when unlocking the car?
I can use the key to manually lock the car but I can't continue to keep doing that.
I've changed the fob battery, I could potentially change the fob also and/or change the main battery but I'd be doing that based on nothing plus it could be a waste of time and money.
 
T McGibney said:
We had a similar problem with a different make of car and a recommended auto electrician solved it in 10 minutes for €40.
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OK, that's a good suggestion, thanks.. So if the dealer continues to refuse to inspect and repair it at no cost, I'll need to go down that route.
 
To provide an update on this, after being contacted by SIMI, the dealership agreed to take the car in and replace the 'after market' car alarm that had been fitted to the car. They claim that a META Alarm system was removed and a new META alarm system was fitted.
However, the problem still happened again this morning so I've contacted the dealership.... again.
 
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