When I got my car, I had to buy a remote off eBay. It worked fine at first but started to get a bit sporadic. I watched and noticed that the light wasn't always coming on. So I replaced the battery.

That didn't fix the problem.

I took the board out and carefully looked at the solder joints and didn't see anything that looked off. Recently the problem has gotten more frequent and I really can't afford to shell out the money for a new remote. I just popped the remote open again and took a close look at the circuit board.

The battery seems to be properly seated and all the joints seem fine. I couldn't recreate the problem with the circuit board out of the housing. However, I set it back into the bottom of the remote housing and it stopped working. I applied some pressure and it started working again. Remove some pressure and it stops.

So I don't know if anyone else has had this problem but my wonderfully ghetto solution has been to fold up paper and place it under the rubber mat that sits on top of the circuit board. Hopefully that'll fix things.

If anyone else has any suggestions, I'd like to hear them.

 

You may be able to clean the contacts (where the buttons hit) with a number 2 pencil eraser.

 

I'll most definitely keep that in mind - right now, the paper fix seems to work so we'll see how long it holds up. I'm thinking that, for some reason, once it's set in the housing, the battery doesn't touch the contacts properly.