Pricing
Sixteen jobs, the whole list, and the door that decides them.
All sixteen jobs are printed here, fourteen with ranges and two quoted once the doors have been walked. What moves a figure inside its range is which lock on the way in stopped you and how long that lock has stood unused. A front door somebody opens twice a day takes the low end. A gate latch nobody has walked through since the complex opened is dry, full of grit and often will not take the key that was cut for it, and that takes the time it is owed. Say which one stopped you and the range closes to a single figure. One list covers the whole city, and the clock is the only thing allowed to move a figure once it is said: $48 between 8pm and midnight, $86 between midnight and 7am, both shown in the table below.
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All the clock is allowed to do, on six common jobs
Every figure below is the low end of that job's published range with the hour already inside it, said the way you would hear it on the phone. Between 8pm and midnight a job carries $48, and between midnight and 7am it carries $86. Nothing else on the clock changes a number, and neither a weekend nor a holiday does.
| Job | 7am–8pm | 8pm–12am | 12am–7am |
|---|---|---|---|
| House lockout | $129 | $177 | $215 |
| Car lockout | $106 | $154 | $192 |
| Business lockout | $142 | $190 | $228 |
| Lock replacement | $126 | $174 | $212 |
| Car key replacement | $156 | $204 | $242 |
| Key fob programming | $94 | $142 | $180 |
The $89 visit is inside every figure in this table rather than underneath it. These are low ends, and what lifts a job off them is the door. A leaf that has dropped on its hinges, a bore cut narrower than the modern standard, a strike that has to be moved and its mortise recut: any of those lands the figure higher in the published range, and it is said on the call rather than found on the receipt.
Why a range
A range is wide because of how many doors there are
The same job at two addresses in this town lands at opposite ends of one range. What separates them is which lock on the way in stopped you, how long that lock has stood unused, and who is entitled to have it worked on. Five things settle it, in the order they come up on the call.
Which door first, the clock second
What moves a figure inside its range is the door in front of the technician, not the time on it. A cylinder somebody turns every day sits near the bottom of the range. The clock is allowed one thing only: $48 between 8pm and midnight, $86 between midnight and 7am, folded into the figure before you agree to anything.
Which of the four it is
The vehicle gate, the podium garage, the lobby door and the unit itself all book under one job name and are four separate pieces of work with four different figures. A gate latch in a driveway is not the same visit as a door at the top of a stair. Name the one that stopped you and most of the spread is gone before anybody drives out.
How long the metal has stood unused
A gate latch nobody has walked through since the complex opened is dry, full of grit and often will not take the key that was cut for it. The same is true of a side gate on a hillside lot and of the second cylinder on a garage service door. Age on its own is not what costs. Standing idle is.
Whether the lock can be kept
A key you have to lean on usually means grit and dry pins rather than a dead lock, and stripping, cleaning and repinning that cylinder is part of the visit, not a line of parts on the bill. Where one truly is past saving it is replaced at $126 to $338. You are told which of the two you have, and why, at the door.
Who is entitled to order it
On a shared door — a vehicle gate, a podium garage, a lobby, a mail block — the work is arranged by whoever manages the property rather than by whoever is standing outside it. That question gets settled on the call, before anybody drives, because the answer changes both the visit and the figure. Your own front door and your own unit are yours to arrange, and nothing extra is charged for asking.
FAQ
What people ask once they hear a figure
The gate at my complex will not open and I am standing on the sidewalk.+
The first question on the call is whether anyone inside can let you in, because that beats any 18 minutes we can drive and it costs nothing. If nobody can, the gate and the ramp behind it have mechanical locks and those can be opened, but a gate serves the whole building rather than your unit, so we ask who is authorizing the work before the van moves. That part is between you and the building. Your own unit door is separate and simpler: $129–$246, picked rather than drilled wherever the mechanism allows, with photo identification checked at the step.
It is six in the morning and there is nobody around. Is a person actually answering the phone?+
Yes, a person, at every hour of every day, holidays included. Both ends of the day are the busy ones here — before seven in the morning and after nine at night — because that is when the street is empty and the spare key is with somebody who is driving. Between 8pm and midnight the total carries $48 and between midnight and 7am it carries $86, and both are inside the figure you hear before you agree to anything. The figure quoted at half past six is the figure on the receipt.
My deadbolt only locks if I shove the door. Is the lock failing?+
Usually it is not the lock. Frames in the sixties tracts have settled, so a bolt that once dropped through the middle of its hole now hits the edge of the strike and gets forced until something inside gives up. Caught early the fix is small: the hinges get shimmed, the strike is moved and screwed into framing rather than trim, and the bolt drops with two fingers again. Left alone it turns into a lockout at $129–$246 plus replacement hardware at $126–$338, generally on the evening somebody leans on it a little harder than usual.
What does the hour add to the price?+
Weekends and public holidays cost what a Tuesday afternoon costs here. Only the clock moves a total: $48 for an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $86 between midnight and 7am, both counted inside the number you are quoted. A house lockout that runs $146 in daylight is quoted at $194 at ten in the evening and $232 at two in the morning, and there is no second figure waiting for you at the door.
We just closed on a house here. What is worth doing in the first month?+
Four things, cheapest first. Repin every exterior cylinder at $30–$47 each, because the keys handed over at closing have passed through an agent, a painter and a cleaning crew, and bring the front door, the garage service door and any gate onto one key while the van is already at the curb. Second, do not skip the garage service door, which on these tracts is the second way into the house and often the weakest thing on the property. Third, check the strikes, since a settled frame is standard in this city and a moved strike costs almost nothing against what it prevents. Fourth, if an exterior door is running on a knob latch alone, a real deadbolt fitted is $126–$338.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Name the door, and say who else has a key for it
Milpitas, at any hour, every day of the year. A front door in the tracts, a gate at a complex, a garage service door, a storefront in Midtown or a car in the mall lot — that decides the work, and the work decides the figure. The figure comes back on the same call with the $89 call-out and the clock already inside it, and it is the figure on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing. The van is already on this side of the interchange.