What happens when we fit an immobiliser in Bedford

Nobody enjoys booking work on a car when they cannot picture what is going to happen. This is the whole thing, from the first message to the fitter pulling off your Bedford driveway, so there is nothing left to find out on the day.

It starts with the registration. That tells us the make, the model and the year, which tells us which of the two systems suits the car — that is a compatibility question rather than a matter of preference, and on some vehicles one is clearly the better fit. We come back with which one, what it costs, and a time. 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 fee whether you go ahead or not.

On the day the car does not go anywhere. The fitter comes to your driveway or your workplace car park — Kempston, Elstow, Wixams, Shortstown, Biddenham, Bromham, anywhere across the MK40 to MK45 postcodes — and works where the car already is. There is no unit to drive to, no borrowed lift home, and no day without a car. You keep your keys the whole time and you can watch the entire thing if you want to.

Most fits take two to three hours. The trim comes off, the unit goes onto the car's data network, and the trim goes back. Nothing is cut, drilled or spliced, which is what makes the system safe on a warranty or a lease and 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 a fitter ever 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 your sequence. It is entered on buttons the car already has — steering wheel controls, window switches, the pedals — and it can be up to twenty presses long, though most people settle on something considerably shorter. The advice we give is to pick something you can do with one hand while you are putting your seatbelt on, and to avoid anything with an obvious meaning, so no birthdays and nothing that spells out a pattern somebody could guess from watching once. After about a week it stops feeling like a step at all.

Then we test it in front of you, and you enter it yourself several times before the fitter leaves. That matters more than it sounds. A system nobody has practised gets bypassed within a fortnight, and we would rather spend ten extra minutes on your drive than have you stood in the station car park in the rain wondering why the car will not fire. If anyone else drives the vehicle, get them out to the drive for that part too.

You also get walked through 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 and the CAN Phantom lets you set valet mode from your phone. Learn it before your first dealer visit rather than during it.

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

If that all sounds like something you would rather just get done, send us the registration and we will come back with the system, the price and a slot. We cover Bedford, Kempston, Elstow, Wixams, Shortstown, Biddenham and Bromham, right across the MK40 to MK45 postcodes.