Business · lockout
You cannot open. That is the whole cost.
A shop that opens two hours late has lost two hours of trade and a day of goodwill. We treat a business lockout as the urgent job it is.
What we open, and how
Storefront aluminum doors, hollow metal back doors, office suite doors, roll gates and accordion grates, server and stock rooms, gate motors and padlocked yards.
Storefront doors are their own thing
The aluminum and glass door on the front of most shops takes a mortise cylinder driving a hook bolt or a pivoting deadbolt into the frame. They are nothing like a house door, and the methods that work on a house either do nothing here or crack a very expensive piece of glass.
On most of them a hook bolt can be worked without damage. Where it cannot, the honest answer is usually to drill and replace the cylinder, which costs a cylinder rather than a door leaf. We will tell you which it is before we start, with a price, and you decide.
Roll gates and accordion grates
Usually a cylinder in a slide bolt or a padlock on the inside, which is what San Mateo's own code asks for on this kind of door. Jammed gates are more often a track or a spring problem than a lock problem, and we will say so rather than charging you to find out.
Panic bars from the outside
If your back door has a panic bar and no outside trim, there is nothing to pick. That is the point of the device. Getting in is a different job and sometimes it means going through another door first.
What we need before we open a commercial door
More than for a house, and for a good reason. A house has one obvious occupant. A commercial unit has staff, former staff, a landlord, a managing agent and sometimes a dispute.
- Photo identification.
- Something tying you to the business at that address: a lease, a business license, a utility bill, letterhead, a bank statement.
- If you are staff rather than the owner, we will want a call with whoever is on the lease. Not a text from a number we cannot verify.
If you are a managing agent or a landlord and the tenant is still in possession, that is a different conversation and the answer is usually no. Commercial tenancies have their own lockout rules and we are not going to be the instrument of one.
While you are waiting
Check the obvious, because about one call in ten solves itself before we arrive.
- Is there a second key with a staff member who is five minutes away?
- Is the back or side door on a different key?
- If it is an electric strike or a maglock, has the power actually failed? A building-wide outage is an electrician, not a locksmith.
- If a code pad is rejecting a code that worked yesterday, check whether somebody changed it rather than assuming the unit has failed.
If none of that applies, we are on the way. In an emergency, 20 to 30 minutes.
Questions
Will you have to drill it?
Usually not. Where it is the only route we say so first, with a price, and what gets replaced is a cylinder rather than a door.
My employee quit and still has keys.
Rekey, today. It keeps your hardware and kills every key out there. If you have a master system, say so, because that changes what has to be done.
Can you do it out of hours so we do not lose trading time?
Yes. A person answers at any hour and we would rather do a planned job at six in the morning than an emergency at eleven.
The gate motor is dead and the shop is behind it.
There is normally a manual release. Tell us the make when you call and we will talk you through it on the phone if it can be done without us.
Need someone now?
A person answers, at any hour, in English or Spanish. If it is not urgent, we will hold a day and a time for you instead.
Or leave your details and we will call you.