About a month ago, the key fob stopped opening the car. It had been annoying for a while, and I just assumed the battery had died. Due to general apathy and laziness, my wife and I did not replace the battery... we just manually unlocked the car via the driver side key.

Crisis yesterday... seems the key in the door is broken. It's wiggling loosely when you turn the key, and while it does work at the moment to open the driver door, turning it a second time to unlock all the doors is difficult or impossible. Soon, we may not be able to lock or unlock the car at all.

Obvious first step is to replace the battery in the fob... and it didn't work. Now my wife is cursing purchasing the car, and I'm tasked with finding a way to fix it that costs under $200, since the economy has not been nice to us.

Step 1: Find out if it is the fob or car that's failing. How do I determine this? We have just one key fob, no spare.

Step 2: Failing an inexpensive way to fix or replace the fob, what's my likely avenue for repairing the door lock? Is this a common issue?