where to begin?
(this is why i stick to chain stores folks.. ma & pa shops do this kind of crap constantly.. at least the big chains have warranties and other people to talk to in this kind of situation)
1. range.. the antenna that alarm comes with is meant to be an externally mounted one. looks kinda like one of those old school cell phones ones. my guess is that they shoved it under your dash to save time. kinda dirtball.. but i've definately seen it happen before.
and as weird as it might sound, your window tint can definately affect your range if the antenna is placed in the car.. a lot of newer window tints available today have a metallic content to them.. it affects rf signal just like your car's sheet metal does.. usually the darker tint contains a higher percentage of the metallic content. i'm not saying, however, that it's as bad as sheet metal for signal penetration.. but it definately doesn't help an already hindered situation.
2. missing sms messages.. see above. with the cell phone style external antenna, you can be sure that that thing's sending the text messages as well..
3. incorrect messages/triggers .. the alarm you bought didn't include the tilt and proximity sensors, you had to buy those seperately. my guess is that the alarm itself didn't come with a lot of different options for adding extra sensors. the only triggers the alarm itself has (guessing here) would be for the door, trunk, hood, shock, and glass.. pretty sure the glass break microphone would have it's own plug, so that leaves 4 wires on the main harness for triggers.. the problem here is actually 2 different things.
a. you have 6 different triggers .. door, trunk, hood, shock, tilt, prox
b. all the wires on the harness are black
in order to get all the triggers working you'd have to tie a few of them together. (ie.. tie shock and tilt together to alarm's shock input) depending on how they tied it together, that's explain the different messages.. not to mention the fact that they could have gotten the 4 black wires mixed up during the install..
and that's just off the top of my head.. i could probably give you some more answers if i was playing with the car itself, but seeing as how we're a few thousand miles away from each other, that ain't gonna happen
best thing you can do is to go back into the shop and try and be cool with the guys.. make your concerns known, but don't get confrontational about it. KEEP YOUR COOL! .. kill em with kindness i always say.. they're a lot more likely to help you out if you're cool about it (believe me.. i know. i can't tell you how many times i've brickwalled some random customer for getting mouthy with me)
worst case scenario, take it to another shop.. i say worst case here because this will cost you. troubleshooting work like this is time consuming and you will most likely be charged by the hour. as an example, my shop charges $72 an hour to troubleshoot this kind of thing. figure you've already got an hour's worth of time in the guy tearing the car apart and then putting it back together again.. let alone the time spent actually working on the problem.
one word of advice, if you do have to go to another shop.. DO NOT BASH THE GUYS AT THE OTHER SHOP! .. most of us in this profession know each other.. their's not a whole lot of installers out there, so we tend to get to know each other. that jackass from the other shop might just be his drinking buddy.. hell, it could be his girlfriend's brother (been in that one myself) ... if he wants to start talking crap, then so be it.. just make damn sure you don't.
well that's enough from me.. i hope this is useful to you, and good luck getting the problem resolved
uber
