Air conditioner remote does not work?

I have a Sanyo KRV93 split type air conditioning unit which we brought from England to France. The remote control was crushed in transit and have tried 2 different multi-purpose aircon remotes that claim to work with the Sanyo but neither of them will connect with the system. I have tried both manual and auto searches with both models.
The system work on stand-by mode - ie it will start up manually but is restricted to cooling or heating to +/-2 degrees above/below the present ambient temperature only.
The installer claims that all his tests show that the machine is in good working order and refuses to make further tests.