2004 Ford Focus SE Wagon…197K miles….was used as a service vehicle to do approximately 5 locations per day for 6 years. The car was a real trooper until…….
Intermittent dash lights flickering. Occasionally, when I walk past the car, I will hear what sounds like a chime. Also after a few days battery would be dead. 
I had a no start condition. After sending the car to 4 different shops (one replaced the starter, the other replaced the alarm, another wiggled some wires and called it fixed, one guy just ran away screaming). Same problem. OBTW, I described these symptoms in detail to every shop that looked at the car. So I replaced the ignition switch myself, car starts reliably now. Anyway, back to those dash lights flickering. I was able to jiggle the key and finally get the lights to shut off and the chime to sound like normal when the key is in the cylinder. I believe the cylinder is just plain worn out and doesn’t really know what mode it’s in. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that commonly causes these symptoms in this model of car?

Sorry for the long question.