Five minutes before you call a locksmith
A good share of the callouts I get could have been solved without me, or cost half as much. This is what is worth checking first, from the person who loses money by telling you.
1. Is there a spare key within twenty minutes?
It sounds obvious and it is the first thing people forget while standing on a landing feeling stupid. Partner, children, parents, the neighbour you always talk to, the building manager, the flatmate who is at work. A thirty-second call is free; I am not.
If you live alone and nobody has a spare, that is exactly the situation that gains most from leaving one with somebody you trust afterwards. It costs nothing and it saves the whole of the next fright.
2. Look at how the door is shut
This is the detail that moves the price of an opening most, and almost nobody mentions it. A door shut on the latch — that wedge-shaped bolt that goes in by itself — is a quick job. A door double-locked with the key, bolts driven into the frame, is a different job and costs more.
How to tell without being a technician: push the door. If it gives a little in the frame and you feel play, it is on the latch. If it is solid as a wall, the key was turned.
3. Check the other ways in before giving up
In houses with a garden, a garage or a ground-floor terrace, more often than you would think there is a window or a back door open. Walk round before anybody gets on a motorbike.
In flats, check whether you have access to the light well or share a terrace with a neighbour. It is not the usual answer, but looking is free.
4. If the key has snapped, stop
This is the most expensive mistake of the lot. Half the key stays in the cylinder and the instinct is to get it out with pliers or another key. What that almost always achieves is pushing it further in and damaging the pins, and what was extracting a piece of key becomes replacing the whole cylinder.
Leave it exactly as it is and send a photo. It often comes out in a minute with an extractor, with nothing needing to be changed.
5. Send a photo of the cylinder
Face on, and from the edge with the door open if you can. That shows the make, the size and whether it is a security cylinder, which means we know what to bring and what it costs before setting off.
It is the difference between a fixed price in writing and a "we will see when we get there", which is the sentence that opens the door to everything you do not want.
Common questions
- What if it turns out I did not need you?
- All the better. If it can be solved over WhatsApp, it gets solved over WhatsApp and costs nothing. If somebody had already set off there is a call-out and diagnosis price, and you are told it before anyone moves, never after.
- I am too stressed to remember any of this.
- That is normal. Write what you can and I will ask: how it is shut, whether anyone has a spare, what you can see on the cylinder. That is what the conversation is for.
- Why are you telling me how not to call you?
- Because the person who reads this today and does not need me is the one who writes in two years when they do. And because the alternative — letting you pay for something you did not need — is exactly what gives this trade the reputation it has.
What we do about this
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