Frequently Asked Questions

The one you are given on the call. There is no published figure for any address, because the window depends on where the nearest technician actually is when you ring. An overnight call to Marine Drive is an easier run than a July afternoon, because the parking that clogs the strip in season has gone by then. Hazelmere and the Campbell Heights units are a longer drive, and you hear that on the call rather than while you are standing outside a door.

The emergency locksmith page sets out what slows a van down in each part of the peninsula, including two cases where it is not the drive: a car standing in one of the paid beach lots, and the waterfront overnight. Each area page carries the access notes for that stretch.

Distance turns up in the arrival window rather than in the quote, which is why the window stretches from the pier out to the Hazelmere acreages while the work itself is quoted off the same bands at either end. What genuinely moves a figure is the number of keyed doors and what is hanging on them, and both of those get settled while you are still on the phone.

The lock change and rekey page lists a service call and dispatch charge in its own price table, and that one comes off the bill for the work instead of sitting on top of it. The terms cover cancellations: where a technician has already been dispatched and the call is then cancelled, or nobody is at the address when the van arrives, a dispatch fee may be applied for the trip out. A cancellation made with reasonable notice carries no charge, which is the argument for ringing back the moment plans change.

A standard residential lockout runs $95–$160 for the lockout itself, and where it lands inside that depends on the lock, the hour, and which part of the peninsula you are standing in. The total for your address is confirmed on the call before a technician is sent. Nights, weekends and holidays carry the after-hours rate, quoted on the call rather than added at the end. A car lockout is quoted the same way, and a high-security or push-to-start vehicle runs above the residential band.

The full table of emergency bands is on the emergency locksmith page, and rekey and lock change work is listed job by job, with the commercial line priced per cylinder, on the lock change and rekey page.

By the gap between two numbers. That version of this trade quotes $15–$35 on the phone, arrives, decides at the door that the job is high-security or complex, and leaves a bill of $300–$600 behind. The rest of the tells are just as plain: no street address for the business, no licence number anyone will say out loud, no ID offered on arrival, and a price that doubles between the call and the doorstep.

Ours is BC Security Worker Licence E106677. The quote is firm for the job you described, and if something on the door moves it, you hear the reason before the work continues rather than after. Call 778.370.5594 and ask dispatch to confirm a figure before you commit to anything.

No, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Lobby credentials run on a system the strata or the property manager administers, so a replacement fob is a request to the building rather than a job for a van.

Your suite door is the other half of that sentence, and it is ours: the deadbolt, the cylinder inside it, and the keys that turn it. The buildings along the waterfront and up on the bluff split this way almost without exception. Beach condo security goes through what that means when you take possession.

Ask for it when you book, and it goes out by email ahead of the visit instead of being dug up at the lobby door. It is a BC Security Worker Licence, number E106677, together with proof that the business carries liability insurance. Managers in the waterfront buildings and the North Bluff Road residences ask often enough that the file stays ready to send. The about page has the rest of it.

Two different visits, and saying which one you have is what stops a wasted trip. A lockout is an entry job: the key exists, it is just on the wrong side of the glass. A lost or broken key is a cutting and coding job, because the blade and the chip both have to be made at the vehicle before the engine will do anything. Tell dispatch which you are, and the right kit is aboard when the van leaves. The detail splits the same way, across the automotive and car key replacement pages.

There rarely is one. Say which lot, and whether you are east or west of the pier, then read out the nearest sign you can see from where you are standing and describe the car. That combination puts the van on the correct side of the pier on the first approach, which is the whole game on a July weekend when every lot along the beach is full and the streets behind them are worse.

Two things, and both are catchable on the phone rather than at the door. One is hardware: an unusual cylinder profile on an older door has to be ordered in, so a minute spent describing what is actually mounted on that door buys back a week. The other is the small number of vehicles that need manufacturer authorization before a key can be coded, which we would rather flag before dispatch than discover in a driveway with you watching. Most other work closes on the first visit, because the van is loaded for it.

Describe the symptom and dispatch will name the job. Three get booked under the wrong heading more than anything else here.

A door that will not latch, or one that has swollen tight after a run of wet weather, is usually a door problem wearing a lock problem's clothes, so it starts at door repair. A key that turns in the ignition while the engine stays silent is a key problem and not a lockout. And a deadbolt that has gone stiff may want nothing more than fresh pins, or may be past that entirely, which is a decision made with the cylinder out on the doorstep rather than guessed at over the phone. Book it as a lock change or rekey and the tech will tell you which it turned out to be.