Dead Battery

I received the call from my elder daughter a couple weeks ago on a Monday afternoon. She had gone out to the student parking lot, a long affair involving a 30 minute bus ride and a 5 minute walk, to get her car and go with her roommate out to some store for something or other. She couldn't get into her car using the key fob.

I knew what was likely coming but I walked her through removing the built in key inside the fob and getting the door open. She tried to start the car but nothing happened. No noises, no nothing. I told her that I was sorry but her battery was completely dead and that she wasn't going to be able to use the car that day nor could I help her fix it over the phone. They ended up calling an Uber and continuing on their way. Amazing what modern technology does. In my day without cellphones, the only option would have been to walk back to the bus stop for the long wait for the next bus and the long ride back to where I came.

I had replaced the battery before my daughter even went to college and had it go completely dead soon after while still at home. I diagnosed that one as a bad battery as it developed a bulge on one side, the first ever such diagnosis in all my life. I was reimbursed with a new battery and that lasted all of a year. Sometime last summer I had to move the car for some reason or other and then it sat for a couple weeks. When my daughter went to use it, the battery was dead. Had I left something on? I can't say. I tried to recondition the battery with my chargers which have that function and indeed it started up several times without issue before she left for college this fall. But in the 2-1/2 months it had been sitting unused in the parking lot since, it went completely dead again.

I bought a new battery a few days after the call and drove up to her college and swapped out the batteries. The car started right up. I tested the alternator which showed that it was indeed functioning but the voltage was on the low side of voltages which I had googled online beforehand. I fought the mental battle again. My running the battery down had been hard on it and likely the culprit for the dead battery but perhaps there was something else wrong? Perhaps I had shut everything off as I feel I had but there is a drain on the battery somehow?

Being that I live a 2 hour drive away and winter is approaching when one a dependable car can be life or death, I bit the bullet and got it shuttled to the car dealership in town to look at it. The convinced me that they could do a deeper test of the alternator than I could with my volt meter and check for anything draining the battery. That was a Friday afternoon. On Monday they sent me a video of them checking the alternator with a simple voltmeter attached showing that it worked. They later wrote they could find nothing draining the battery but recommended that they removed the factor remote start option, which we have never used, just to be sure but it would cost $300 more than the $200 in labor I already owe them for doing the "deep" test of the alternator. What crooks!

I told them to leave the remote starter in place, paid the $200 for the supposed tests and had my daughter use their complementary shuttle service to get a ride there to retrieve her car.

I wish they had found something wrong. Now I must continue wondering once more was it me or is there something else wrong with the car with the third battery in 2 years in it. The only redeeming thing in this scenario is that the cost of a new battery is less than the cost of them doing a "deep" test of the alternator so if it happens again, I know which route I'm going to go initially and it certainly won't be another trip to the dealership for testing.