My mum suffered from this at a Renault dealership.
She gets all her work done at a local independant garage but she broke one of her keys and you have to use Renault to get replacements coded to the immobiliser.
She'd already got the key cut, and it would open the doors but wouldn't start the car due to being unprogrammed.
So she arranged to get the key programmed at a dealership in Northampton.
When she got there, she was told there was a little bit of a delay due to a backlog of work, so she left the keys with them and went round the corner to get some lunch.
Upon returning her car was up on a ramp!
She enquired as to why they'd need to see underneath her car to program a keycode and got back
"It's our policy to perform a safety check on every car that comes in here, don't worry Madam.
"
Needless to say that the free safety check reported that her brakes were dangerously low and the car wasn't safe to drive
(in fact they were quite adamant that they weren't going to let her drive away).
They also pointed out that the clutch was very low and likely to
"fail at any moment".
When she'd had the key cut at the local friendly garage, she'd also got the brakes replaced and had a general service, MOT etc.
We took them off and lo and behold, brand new discs and pads, as per her receipt.
2 years on it's still on the same clutch.
.
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