House Lockout in Pleasanton
$134–$255. Entries, garage service doors, patio sliders, cellars and the room over the garage, opened with nothing left behind on the door or on what is bolted to it. That figure already holds the $89 drive, and the clock is priced before anyone sets off: $52 after 8pm, $94 after midnight. Which of the nine doors it is moves the number far more than the brand stamped on the lock, so lead with that and the total comes straight back down the line.
4.9 / 5· 274 reviews from Pleasanton and the Tri-Valley
$134–$255
Typical price
19 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
The front door here is one of nine. A house in this city also has a garage service door, a side gate, a pool gate, a cellar, a safe, a room over the garage, a mail block at the road and a gate across the drive, and any one of them can be the door that stops you today. Name it while you are still on the phone. A front door, a yard gate and a pool gate load three different sets of tools, and that happens before the van pulls off Main Street.
Where you are standing fills in the rest. Val Vista calls about the garage service door, the one nobody carries a key for because the opener has done that job since the house was built. Birdland calls about a yard gate on a padlock, often at a rental where the key left with the last tenant. Vintage Hills and the streets climbing toward Castlewood call about the pool gate or the gate across the drive. Downtown it is the street entrance at the sidewalk with a stair behind it, running up to an office over a shop. Mission Park calls about a front door that has been getting stiffer all year, and that one usually turns out to be the frame rather than the lock.
Getting through is the least dramatic part of the visit, and it ought to be. First choice is always whatever leaves the lock in service afterward: a pick, a shim, a decoder, a bypass on a latch that will take one. The cylinder stays bolted where the builder put it and the rose around it goes back without a scratch. A sliding patio door is tripped at the latch from outside and the panel never comes up out of its track, since a panel that has been lifted rides badly for the rest of its life. Gate padlocks get shimmed or picked in preference to being cut, because a cut padlock is a second bill on the same call. Some cylinders give up nothing short of a hole, and when yours is one of those you hear it before the drill leaves the case, the choice belongs to you, and the number quoted on the phone is still the number on the receipt.
Proving the address is yours takes under a minute: a photo ID that matches it, or an ID plus a bill or a lease pulled up on your phone. Shared doors work differently. A gate an association owns, or the street entrance every office above a shop uses, needs the question of who may authorize work answered on the phone before a van rolls. This shop holds no access list for anybody and does not rule on who is owed a key.
A home opening is $134 at the low end and $255 at the high, with the $89 trip folded in rather than stapled on afterward. $134 buys a front door in daylight. Two things carry a job up from there. Which door it is, first: a pool gate, a cellar or the gate across the drive is not the same work as a front entrance, and five of the nine doors on a Pleasanton lot are each their own job. Then the last time anybody opened it, because a cylinder that has stood through a year of dust and sprinkler spray usually will not take even its own key, and freeing it is part of what gets you inside. That same $134 door is $186 after eight at night and $228 between midnight and seven. Typical run is 19 minutes: near 12 Downtown, 15 out to Val Vista, 19 in Vintage Hills, 26 at Ruby Hill. Workmanship carries ninety days.
“Let the dog out at half past two in the morning, the wind caught the front door, and the deadbolt took it out of my hand. Nineteen years in this house and the closest spare I could name was on the gardener's ring — a sentence I listened to myself say, in a bathrobe, at two in the morning. The call was picked up straight away, and after two questions about which door it was I had a figure: $255, holding the $94 overnight rate and the $89 drive inside it, decided while nobody had started the engine yet. The outfit I tried first would not commit to any number until a technician had looked at it, and our neighbors handed $420 to that sort of company last winter. Twenty minutes or so and the van was at the curb. He worked the deadbolt open through the keyway without a drill, so the door still wears the lock it was built with, and on his way out he tried the pool gate two steps away, found it seized solid on the same key, and told me what sorting it would cost rather than simply doing it. The invoice read $255.”
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 of the nine doors stopped you — a front door, a garage service door, a side gate, a pool gate, a cellar and a safe are six different pieces of work — and how long that particular door has gone unused. A front door somebody opens twice a day takes the low end. A gate latch nobody has walked through since last summer is dry, full of grit and often will not accept even 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.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$52
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$94
FAQ
House Lockout: quick answers
The side gate will not open. We have not been through it since last summer.+
That is the single most common call on this number. Twelve months of dust and sprinkler spray dry a gate cylinder out, and then the key goes halfway, or it spins and moves nothing at all. It gets shimmed or picked open, then pulled apart, cleaned and oiled on the spot so that next spring is not a repeat, and a spare blade is cut at the van. Inside $134 to $255 with the trip counted, $186 after eight, $228 overnight.
The front door pulled shut behind me and our spare is with the cleaner, who comes Tuesday.+
Routine, and it is why the van sits Downtown instead of one city over. An empty schedule on the other end changes nothing about the work: one exterior leaf, opened without a mark. Figure 12 minutes to a Downtown address, 16 to Mission Park, 19 up in Vintage Hills. While the door is standing open, ask about the garage service door, because that is the one people discover they have never held a key for.
It is the pool gate, and the house keys are inside on the table.+
Say pool gate on the call, because the van loads differently for it. Most are a padlock or an outdoor cylinder that has been in the weather since the last time anyone swam, and that stretch of neglect is what decides where inside $134 to $255 the job lands. If the gate belongs to an association instead of to your own yard, authority to order the work gets settled on the phone first. Allow about 19 minutes to Vintage Hills, 24 toward Castlewood.
Related
More emergency services
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Name the door, and say how long since anyone used it
Pleasanton, whatever the hour, every day of the year. An entry in the tracts, a seized gate latch on a hill street, a pool gate, a safe left behind by the last owners, a shop door on Main, a car sitting in the Stoneridge lot — that is what decides the work, and the work decides the figure. You get that figure on this call with the $89 drive and the clock already inside it, and it is the figure on the invoice. Ninety days on the labor, in writing. The van is a few doors off Main.