Locked out of your house: what to do

First, stop and check the obvious

Standing outside your own door is the worst moment to make an expensive decision, so spend two minutes on the free options before you spend anything.

• Walk the whole building. The back door, the side door, the door from the garage into the house, the basement suite entrance. Most of the lockouts we attend have a second door that nobody had checked.
• Check the windows you can reach safely from the ground. Safely is the word doing the work: nobody has ever been glad they went up a ladder in the rain in their work clothes.
• Check the door itself. If the handle turns but the door will not open, you are not locked out, you have a jammed latch or a dropped door, which is a different and usually cheaper job.
• Look for the key. Coat pocket, car footwell, still in the lock on the inside, in the door you came out of.

Who else has a key

Before a paid call out, run through the people who might already have one: a partner at work, a parent, the neighbour who feeds the cat, the friend who stayed last month, the key you left at the office. A twenty minute wait is cheaper than any locksmith in the city, and it is the right answer often enough to be worth the phone calls.

If you rent, call the building first

Tenants should always ring the landlord, the caretaker or the property manager before calling anyone else. Many buildings will let you in at no cost, and in the ones that charge a lockout fee it is usually less than a call out. It is also the fastest route: they can prove you live there, which a locksmith cannot do from the sidewalk.

If nobody answers, or the building has no after hours contact, then call us. Be ready to prove tenancy when we arrive, because we will ask.

What not to do

• Do not break a window. A pane of glass in a modern double glazed unit costs more than the lockout, sometimes several times more, and you will spend the night with a board over it.
• Do not kick the door. It splits the jamb, and a split jamb is a door repair plus a lock, not a lock.
• Do not credit card the latch. It works on an unlocked spring latch and does nothing at all against a thrown deadbolt, and you will lose the card into the gap.
• Do not let anyone drill a lock that can be picked. Most residential cylinders open non destructively. Drilling should be the last resort on a high security cylinder or a seized lock, quoted before it starts, never the opening move.
• Be careful with the cheapest advertised price. The pattern to watch for is a very low number in the ad, an unmarked car, no company name on the invoice, and a price that grows once the technician is standing at your door. Ask for the total on the phone, ask who is attending, and expect a real business address.

What a lockout costs

The cost to unlock a door depends on the time of day and on what the lock turns out to be. These are the prices we quote on the phone:

• Home or business lockout, standard hours: $80-$160. Standard hours are 8:30 am to 5 pm.
• After hours labour, 5 pm to 9 pm: $150.
• Overnight labour, 9 pm to 8:30 am: $250 per hour.
• If the lock has to be replaced afterwards: $80-$160 installed plus the hardware.

The after hours rate is quoted before anyone is dispatched, not discovered on the invoice. Every figure here matches the prices page, and the emergency service itself is on emergency locksmith. A Vancouver call is normally a 20-30 minute drive from our shop on Macdonald Street. Everywhere else in the Lower Mainland has its own honest window, listed on the service areas page, and you get a real number on the phone rather than a slogan.

What we ask for before we open a door

Every legitimate locksmith in British Columbia checks that the door is yours to open, and the check happens at the door, not on the phone. What satisfies it:

• Photo ID showing the address.
• ID plus a tenancy agreement, a recent utility bill, or a piece of addressed mail if your licence still shows an old address.
• For a tenant with nothing to hand, the landlord or the building manager reachable by phone to confirm it.
• For a business, ID plus something showing you are authorised: a lease, a business licence, or the owner on the phone.

If you cannot show any of it, we will not open the door, and that is the point of the rule rather than a failure of it. The same rule is what stops somebody doing it to you.

How the opening actually works

Most house lockouts are picked or bypassed and take a few minutes once the technician is at the door. Nothing is forced, the cylinder still works afterwards, and your key still fits it. A latch that has closed behind you without the deadbolt thrown is quicker still.

Some cases genuinely need more. A high security cylinder that resists picking, a lock that has seized, a key snapped off in the plug, or a deadbolt thrown into a frame that has swollen. In those cases we say so before starting, quote the repair, and replace the cylinder afterwards. A drill first technician is a technician in a hurry, not an expert.

Stopping it happening again

• Leave a spare with a person, not under a rock. The mat, the planter and the fake stone are all the first place anyone looks.
• A key safe is fine if it is a good one, mounted on brick or concrete rather than siding, and out of sight of the street.
• Get the doors keyed alike so one key covers the house. Keying alike, and cancelling the keys you have lost track of, is a rekey at $25-$45 per cylinder.
• Fix the door that only locks if you lift it. That door is why people leave it unlocked.
• If you have lost the keys rather than left them inside, rekey. The keys are somewhere, possibly with an address attached.

The rest of what we check on a house call is in our home security checklist, and the service pages start at residential locksmith.

Frequently asked questions