San Leandro neighborhood · 24/7
Downtown and East 14th: security grilles at seven in the morning, flats over the shops at eleven at night
The main street through the middle of the city, with Washington Avenue, the Bal Theatre, the BART station and the short cross streets. Storefronts at the sidewalk, rented flats on the floors above, public lots behind the buildings. Fifteen minutes from the van on Davis Street.
15 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The commercial half of this street wakes up first. A roll-down grille that will not lift, a cylinder that spins loose in a glass door because its retaining screw has backed out, a key bent flat by a pocket full of change: those are the seven in the morning calls, and none of them need a new lock. Where hardware really has reached the end, storefront door locks are $155 to $449 and the count is per door, so a shop with one entrance hears one door and a corner unit with two hears two. A business lockout is $129 to $239. Restaurants on this stretch also keep a rear door onto the service lane with an exit device on it, and $289 to $739 per door covers a bar that has stopped holding. Whatever it turns out to be, the number quoted on the call is the number on the emailed receipt, and card or tap is taken at the door.
Upstairs is a different building. A door on the sidewalk, a stair, a landing, and unit doors that have collected hardware from three different decades. A flat lockout is $119 to $205. The lock is opened intact, since it belongs to the building rather than to the person standing on the landing; if it ever came to drilling, that would need a yes first and it would not raise the number. Say on the call whether the street door still opens and whether the entry panel rings through to a phone, because a technician who cannot reach the stair cannot reach the flat. Between tenants a rekey is $26 to $42 per cylinder, and two flats off one landing use the $89 visit once inside a single figure. Where a landlord needs the job on paper, a written line naming the address, the doors and the keys handed over goes out with the receipt.
Then there are the cars, and downtown they cluster in the BART lot, the two public lots and the metered curb. A car lockout is $99 to $189. Name the lot and the row when you call and the technician walks straight to the vehicle instead of reading plates in the dark. A fob that has gone quiet after a couple of years usually wants a coin cell and nothing else; where the car has genuinely lost the fob, programming a new one at the vehicle is $89 to $185, and that floor sits level with the $89 visit and cannot fall below it. The last calls of the night come after the theater and the kitchens empty out. Calls are answered 24/7, with $45 inside the figure from 8pm to midnight and $80 from midnight to 7am.
Name the block of East 14th or the nearest corner, and say which opening it is: the grille, the shop door, the street door to the stair, or the rear door on the lane. For a flat, the unit number and whether the entry panel rings through both help.
Most requested in Downtown & East 14th
Call for Downtown & East 14thFAQ
Asked on the way to the phone
How fast does the van reach my street?+
Twenty-three minutes is the citywide average, because the van works out of Davis Street rather than being sent across a bridge. Downtown and East 14th run about 15 minutes, Estudillo Estates and Best Manor 15, Davis Street and the works 17, Broadmoor 19, the Marina and Mulford Gardens 21, Washington Manor and Floresta Gardens 24, Bay-O-Vista and Bayfair 26. Outside the line: the airport and Doolittle strip 24, Oakland 26, San Lorenzo 26, Ashland 28, Alameda 30. The hill and the far side of the channel are honestly the slowest, and you hear that on the call instead of standing on a porch wondering. The window that arrives by text is drawn from where the van actually is, not from the average.
What does per door and per cylinder actually mean on my bill?+
It means the figure is built the way a shop writes a line on a sheet: what the thing is, how it is counted, what it costs. A rekey is counted per cylinder, so a house with a front door, a back door, a side gate and a garage is four cylinders. Hardware and exit devices are counted per door. A lockout is counted per visit, once, however many minutes it takes. When you say what you have on the call, the count is done then and there, so the figure and its unit both come back before anything is agreed to.
Does the lock get destroyed to open the door?+
Almost never, and never without your say-so. Picks, decoders and bypass tools cover apartment cylinders off Bancroft, post-war deadbolts in the Manor, mortise sets in Best Manor, aluminum storefronts on East 14th, most car doors and most safes, and the lock goes back to work afterward. The exceptions are a high-security cylinder, one already smashed, or one welded around a snapped blade. When that is the door, you hear it plainly, you hear what would go back in its place, and you choose. The figure does not move either way.
What is inside the figure, and what could add to it?+
The $89 visit, the labor, whatever hardware goes on, and the night hour when there is one, all rolled together. Stairs, a buzzer lobby, a gated yard on Alvarado, a long driveway up in Bay-O-Vista, a unit at the back of a complex: none of that moves it. The one thing that can add is extra work you decide on once the technician is standing there, such as repinning the back door while the front one is open. That gets a figure of its own, said out loud, and it starts when you say so.
Is it more on a weekend, a holiday or in the middle of the night?+
Saturday, Sunday and holidays cost what a Tuesday afternoon costs. Only the clock changes it: $45 between 8pm and midnight, $80 between midnight and 7am. Both are folded in before you hear a figure, so nothing appears later. A house lockout that is $119 in daylight comes back as $164 at eleven at night and $199 at four in the morning, and the receipt matches what you agreed to.
I rent. Do I need my landlord before you open my own door?+
No. Plenty of this city rents, and a tenant is the customer rather than a complication. For a lockout, bring photo ID showing the address, or ID plus something on your phone tying you to the unit: a lease page, a utility bill, a rent receipt, addressed mail. Give the building and the unit number on the call so the van is not circling a block off Bancroft looking for the right entry. Nobody is telephoned about you, and no owner has to approve putting you back inside the place you pay for.
I own units and rekey between tenants. How does that go?+
Counted per cylinder, so a fourplex with front and back doors is eight cylinders and comes back as one figure. Each unit can sit on its own key with a single management key over the set, so you carry one key rather than a ring. Old keys are returned in labeled bags to check against whatever the outgoing tenant handed over. The receipt lists every door by unit. A manager acting for an owner who lives elsewhere can approve the work with a management agreement or a text from the owner, and the receipt can be addressed to either party or both.
Our house in Best Manor still has hardware from the thirties. Does it all have to come off?+
Usually not, and that is most of the morning work in this city. Estudillo Avenue, Best Manor and the Broadmoor curves are full of mortise bodies and knob sets that still turn well and only need repinning so keys from three owners ago stop working. Three things genuinely earn replacing: a cylinder with real wear in it, a bolt whose throw no longer reaches the frame, and a strike screwed into trim instead of the stud behind it, which is the single detail that decides whether a door survives a kick. Which of the three applies to yours is said before anything is unscrewed.
Do you work the industrial belt west of the tracks?+
That is the afternoon. Man-doors beside roll-ups on Davis Street, freight and yard doors along Doolittle Drive, stockrooms and small factory offices on Alvarado, exit devices at the back of kitchens on Washington Avenue. Early starts are normal, because a shop that cannot open at seven is losing a shift, not a morning. Anything bigger than a single door — a master key set, an access control run, a building that has never been surveyed — gets walked and counted in person before a figure goes on it.
Do you come to Bayfair, the BART lots and the airport parking?+
Yes, and a good share of the car work lives in exactly those places: the Bayfair Center lots, the San Leandro and Bay Fair BART garages, the airport long-term rows and rental returns off Doolittle, the Marina lots, a carport behind a building on Halcyon. Name the lot and give a level, a row or the color of the car, because Bayfair on a Saturday is a lot of parking. A gated garage needs somebody who can get the van through the gate. None of it changes the figure.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
Houses in the morning, shop floors after, and the figure said before either one starts
San Leandro, San Lorenzo, Ashland, Oakland, the airport and Doolittle strip, and Alameda across the channel, 24/7, holidays included. Describe the door, hear one figure with the $89 visit inside it and the unit it is counted in, and the lock gets opened without damage wherever it can be. The receipt says what the call said, whether the deed is in your name or the lease is.