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I bought a '21 Corolla SE from Carvana through a "partner". The partner may have been Hertz since the license plate holder that came with the car says Hertz on it. Carfax says this car was for personal use, so the details are a bit hazy to me.
I intend to install a dash cam and was looking for the interior fuse box and found this thing. As in the title, the red light was blinking until I pressed the button next to it.
The car had some trouble starting, and I suspect a weak battery. If Hertz had this car, could this be part of a tracking system? It would explain battery drain, but I'm not sure.
Might be part of an immobilizer system. A lot of “buy now, pay later, we don’t reject anyone for bad credit” places use them. Not that Carvana is like that (I bought my car from them and had a great experience, though I’ve heard other scammy things since then) but since you mention a “third-party” maybe there’s something funky going on.
Good point. If the immobilizer is misbehaving, that could also explain why the car was having trouble starting. I'm going to trace the cables and see if I can just take this junk out.
I imagine one of those places bought, sold it to someone who couldn't pay, then after repoing it decided to sell thru carvana this time.
Uninstalling the switch probably cost more than it's worth, so they left it.
That’s what I was thinking.