boxofrain,
No, you're not being unacceptable. No one wants to wake up the neighborhood with their remote starter.
Try this:
1. Completely close the car (hood, trunk, doors).
2. Lock car with factory remote. Many factory alarms require 30 seconds to full arm. To be safe, leave the car alone for at least a minute.
3. From outside the car, insert the key in the driver's door, and turn it once to the unlock position (unlocking the driver's door only).
4. Try the remote starter.
5. Did the alarm go off this time? If it didn't, then there's surely what we call a "disarm wire."
Basically, there's a little switch attached to the key cylinder inside the door, and when you turn the key, the switch puts ground to a certain wire, to "tell" the factory alarm to turn off.
The Audiovox remote starter has a wire (BLACK/ blue) labeled "pulse before start," or some installers simply call it "factory disarm."
Regardless, it's just a matter of finding/testing the correct wire inside the car (occasionally it's only available INSIDE the driver's door), and connecting the Audiovox's BLACK/ blue to it.
As the others here have said, this is a basic, everyday installation task. If the installer can't/won't figure this out, that's not a good sign.
The Outback is the wagon version of the Legacy, right? The Legacy has a disarm wire at the car's body computer, under the driver's dash. It's just a matter of connecting ONE easy wire.
In the installer's defense:
A. Older Subarus (and many other older imported cars) didn't have any disarm wire attached to the key cylinder. The only way to disarm the alarm was through the original remote.
It's possible your installer is thinking of older Subarus, or doesn't work on a lot of them, and he doesn't realized they've added this wire in recent years.
However, that's no excuse for not checking out the car, and at least trying.
B. It's also
slightly possible that he's correct, and that your car doesn't have the disarm wire. That's why I asked you to make the test described above.
P.S. Do you ever visit Boston at all? I've been installing Audiovox (for new-car dealerships) since 2001. If they can't fix it, let me know and I'll give you a hand. You can buy me a coffee or something.
You also talked about having it removed and getting a refund, and they said they'd charge you for that? Wow! Not cool!
I'm not a lawyer and therefore I have no idea what their (or your) rights are in that case...........but they're fools to not do something to take care of you.
Did you buy the remote start as part of the sale of the car, or was it installed later through their service department?
If you paid by credit card, call your credit card company. There are sometimes ways to contest the charges, when someone charges you and then doesn't deliver the product/service you paid for.
Also, have you received in the mail from Subaru any type of survey? New-car dealerships are always worried about their CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) scores.
It's really important to them that on the survey, you give them the top score in each category. They might even give you a note that says something like "if you can't mark all categories 'completely satisfied,' call us first."
Things like remote starters, pinstriping, and so forth, are what dealers call "aftersell."
When things go smoothly, the dealership makes a couple hundred extra bucks without lifting a finger.
On the other hand, nothing upsets them more than when an aftersell deal turns bad, and the dealer gets a bad CSI score because of it.
So, if you get a survey like that, before you fill it out, bring it to the manager's attention, and tell him about this unresolved problem.
As long as he gets the impression you want to give him a good score (as long as he fixes the problem), he's likely to want to help you.