House Lockout in Cupertino
$135 to $245. Front doors, atrium gates, garage service doors and patio sliders opened without damage, with a key cut at the curb before the van leaves. The $89 visit sits inside the figure and the hour is named on the call.
$135–$245
Typical price
17 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
This city produces three versions of the same call, and the age of the house tells us which one it is before anyone drives out. In Rancho Rinconada it is usually the knob set the builder screwed on between 1950 and 1953, still in the door, still turning after seventy years of hands. In Fairgrove it is the atrium gate that latched behind you while the house key sat on the counter past the glass. And on the newer streets it is the part nobody expects: a keypad deadbolt whose cells finally quit, on a door where the mechanical key that shipped in the box was never cut.
That last one is worth naming, because it is the whole argument of this shop in one door. The thermostat updated itself last winter. The doorbell updated itself in March. The lights and the driveway gate answer a phone. The lock is where the updates stop, and when it stops answering, someone has to bring a van, a pick and a key machine to your step.
Opening is mechanical and quiet. Old Stern and Price knob cylinders from the early fifties have loose tolerances and give up to a pick faster than most modern hardware. An Eichler slab is thin and flat, and the gate in front of it usually carries a plain latch that a shim clears in under a minute. Sliding panels are worked at the latch and never lifted out of the track, because a lifted panel bends its rollers and never runs true again. If a cylinder genuinely leaves no way in without drilling, you hear that before the drill comes out of the case, you decide, and the figure you were quoted does not change.
Nearly two homes in five here are rented, so keys move between people often, and a renter does not need a landlord standing there to be let back into a place they pay for. An ID carrying the address does it. So does an ID plus a lease page, a rent receipt or a piece of addressed mail on your phone. Changing hardware afterward is the separate question, and that one does need the owner's word.
A house opening is $135 to $245. The $89 visit is already counted inside that, not added at the end. Ordinary hardware on one exterior door in daylight is $135. It climbs toward $225 when a second locked door stands behind the first, when the cylinder is high security, or when a broken key has to come out of the keyway. Between 8pm and midnight that $135 door is said as $190. Between midnight and 7am it is said as $230. The average run across the city is 17 minutes, longer up in Inspiration Heights. Say the age of the house, hear the figure with the hour already in it, and the door is put back in order before anyone leaves.
“Our keypad died some time after eleven and I found out about it at half past, standing outside with groceries. The metal key that came in the box had never been cut; the blank was in a drawer inside the house, which is a special kind of funny at midnight. $245 said on the call with the $95 overnight already inside it, and $245 is what I paid. Fifteen minutes to arrive. He opened the override cylinder without drilling, then cut two keys at the van and made me try one in the door before he would leave.”
All sixteen jobs are printed here, fourteen with ranges and two quoted once the doors have been counted on site. What moves a figure inside its range is the door, not the lock: a leaf that still hangs true takes the low end, a leaf that has dropped on its hinges or carries a narrower old bore takes the high one. Describe the door on the call and the range closes to one figure.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$55
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$95
FAQ
House Lockout: quick answers
Our keypad deadbolt died overnight and nobody ever cut the metal key that came with it.+
That is the most common version of this call on the newer streets, and it is one visit. The bolt is opened, the cells are replaced, and the mechanical key is cut at the van from the cylinder itself, so the next time the batteries go you unlock the door and get on with your day. Keep that key somewhere off the ring you carry.
The atrium gate closed behind me and the house key is inside on the counter.+
Standard Fairgrove call. The gate latch is shimmed, usually in under a minute, and if the house door behind it is locked too it is picked. Both openings sit in the one figure, because the trip is the same trip. Nothing is lifted, pried or cut on either.
Our Rancho Rinconada house still has the original knob the builder put on. Does picking it damage anything?+
No. Those cylinders were made loose to begin with and have worn looser, which is exactly why they pick easily. The plug stays in the door, the knob keeps its finish, and afterward you get an honest word on whether it has years left in it or is due to be repinned or replaced. Nothing is sold to you on the step.
Related
More emergency services
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say the year the house was built, and the rest of the call is short
Cupertino and the west valley, every hour of the day. The age of the door decides the work and the work decides the figure, so the number comes back on the call with the $89 service call and the hour already inside it, and it is the number on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.