Comment by ErroneousBosh

"Car won't start when picking daughter up from swimming" was a good one told to me by a colleague. In the late 90s some high-up C-level at BMW had a lovely new 7-series as his company car, and it was great.

Unfortunately he hadn't even had it a week when he found he couldn't unlock it, and once he had it wouldn't start. And wouldn't you know it, it was bucketing with rain at 8pm and there he was, stuck outside the swimming pool trying to take his daughter home from her swimming club. Off it went back to the garage on a breakdown truck, while he got a rather lower-spec loaner.

Next morning it was fine. All week it was fine. Until it was time to pick his daughter up from swimming, of course.

This went on for a few weeks until eventually they tracked it down to interference with the remote fob.

Because the swimming pool was at the local community centre, in another room in the community centre was a local radio station, and they started broadcasting at 6pm every week night.

What was the first thing anyone did on coming into the studio? Turn on the UHF link from the studio to the transmitter site, on 428MHz, sufficiently close to the 433MHz receiver for the remote central locking fob to desense it and prevent it sending the immobiliser key to car's ECU.

No, no-one back in Munich believed it either.