As I said, this was based on a now dead story. So, recalling how it was addressed in the now missing pieces...
The stories with the Body Swap option usually kept the personalities the same, and the Personality Swap options kept the Bodies the same. I admit, there is a big overlap there. I think the remote issue was always explained that they thought it was a broken TV remote and put it away, but oddly never threw it out.
I'm trying to piece together the fragments of the original story I could find. It's sort of a archaeological project, because all these pieces are way before I added to it.