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Something is causing key fobs to malfunction when drivers park their vehicles at a grocery store in central Alberta — and despite their best efforts, employees can’t figure out why.

In a Wednesday Facebook post, the Westview Co-operative Association Carstairs said they investigated the potential of frequency interference by shutting off power sources in the store the night before.

“The testing equipment revealed that the interference was still being emitted,” the post explained. “This means we are confident that the signal is not coming from the Carstairs [grocery store].”

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They also noted the store doesn’t have Wi-Fi, so they don’t think that could be the issue.

Commenters had their own theories on what could be causing vehicle key fobs to fail.

“Any new LED bulbs with drivers built in?” asked Brent Sharp. “I have seen garage doors that don’t open with the lights on.”

He also posed that street lights or nearby security systems could be part of the problem.

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“There’s a large radio tower right behind the co-op with lots of an antenna,” suggested Paul Pgee. “That would be my first guess.”

And yes, some wondered if the mysterious issue was the work of aliens.



The Facebook post from the grocery store asked visitors to manually lock their vehicles if fobs aren’t working.

“We will continue to work with our community partners to determine the source of the interference.”

The town of Carstairs is located about 50 kilometres north of Calgary.