A Walnut Creek locksmith who names the whole number first.

The citywide average is 18 minutes. Downtown and Broadway Plaza usually see the van in about 12, Walnut Heights in 14, Parkmead in 15, Saranap and Ygnacio Valley in 16, Northgate in 18 and Shadelands in 20. Rossmoor runs closer to 24 because the gate check-in is the longest of any address in town, and the streets above Castle Rock Rd take longer again for the climb and the driveways. Alamo is around 20, Pleasant Hill 16, Lafayette 18, Concord 20 and Danville 22. A slow stretch on I-680 or Ygnacio Valley Rd shows up in the window you are given, which is set from the traffic at that moment rather than from an average.

It means the figure you are given on the call is complete. The $89 service call, the labor, the hardware fitted and any evening or overnight difference are all inside it, stated once as a single number. That number is what the card is charged. It moves only if you ask for something additional while the technician is there, such as rekeying a second door after a lockout, and that addition is named and agreed as its own line before the work on it begins.

Weekends and holidays are charged at the same daytime figures. Arrivals between 8pm and midnight add $40 and arrivals between midnight and 7am add $75, and both are folded into the number before you agree to anything. So a $120 house lockout is $160 in the evening and $195 overnight, and the receipt shows that same total with nothing appended at the door.

Give the manor or co-op address and the entry you use, and the van goes through the gate check-in like any other visitor, which is why Rossmoor is quoted at about 24 minutes instead of the citywide 18. Daytime visits are preferred and easiest for everyone. The van carries lever handles, easy-turn thumbturns and low-effort deadbolts that suit hands that have had enough of stiff hardware and that sit within the community's hardware standards. If the mutual or the HOA needs paperwork, the emailed receipt names the hardware fitted and describes the work in a line you can forward.

Almost never, and never as a first move. Deadbolts, lever sets, apartment cylinders, storefront hookbolts, most safes and most car doors open with picks, decoders, bypass tools and air wedges, and the hardware still works when the door is open. If a cylinder is broken, seized or high-security enough that clean entry fails, the technician explains what drilling would mean and what replacing the cylinder costs before touching it, and the figure stays where it was set on the call. If we cannot get you in at all, nothing is charged.

For a house or condo, photo ID with that address, or ID plus a lease, a utility bill or mail on your phone when the ID address is older than the move. For a car, ID plus the registration or an insurance card, digital is fine. For a suite, shop or office, ID plus a lease, a business license, or confirmation from the owner or the property manager. It takes a minute and it is the reason the work is worth anything.

Usually, yes. Mid-century knob sets, mortise bodies and screen-door latches can be rekeyed, cleaned, re-sprung and adjusted on site, and worn springs and cylinders are often replaceable from the van. When a case is cracked or the parts have simply stopped existing, a modern body can be fitted into the original door cut so the trim, plates and door itself stay untouched. Which of those makes sense is discussed at the door, with the figure agreed before anything is unscrewed.

Both are quoted in writing after someone has walked the doors, because a suite with four doors and a building with forty are not the same job and no published range would tell you the truth about either. The walk-through covers the door count, the existing cylinders, who needs to open what, and whether readers and fobs make more sense than keys for the tenants who turn over. You get an itemized quote with a per-door breakdown, and that quote is what gets invoiced. Weekend and after-hours work in an empty building is arranged in advance at the same figures.