Nearby city · 24/7
Oakland straight over the line: Victorians and bungalows on the flats, hill streets above the freeway, avenues of storefronts that run for miles
The city that begins where San Leandro ends, reached up East 14th and International Boulevard or on the Nimitz. Victorians cut into flats, bungalows from the twenties on the level blocks, houses stepping up the hill above the freeway, older apartment buildings with a street door and a stair, and shopfronts strung along avenues that run for miles. Twenty-six minutes from Davis Street.
26 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Twenty-six minutes, and what makes it twenty-six is mileage and traffic rather than any hesitation about the address. East 14th runs the whole way with a signal on almost every block, and the freeway is quicker at ten in the morning and slower at five, so the van takes whichever is moving. The number quoted at the start of the call is the number on the emailed receipt either way. Most of the house work sits on the flat blocks, where the housing is a generation older than the San Leandro side: Victorians split into an upper and a lower flat before the war, bungalows from the twenties with a deep porch and a mortise case in the edge of the front door, stucco cottages from the thirties on the streets behind them. The usual complaint on a door like that is a key riding high and refusing the last quarter turn, which is ninety years of graphite and four coats of paint rather than a worn lock, and cleaning and repinning is $26 to $42 per cylinder. Where a case has finally cracked at the bolt, a replacement fitted behind the original plate is $115 to $299 per door, so the front of the house reads the same from the sidewalk.
Two kinds of address here put the door further away than the street suggests. Above the freeway the ground climbs, houses sit on cut lots a half flight above or below the sidewalk, driveways go up hard, and a gate on the side path often stands ahead of the front door. A lockout is $119 to $205 and it begins wherever the walk stops, so saying which one is in the way, the gate or the house, decides what gets loaded. Nothing is drilled to shorten a visit, and a drill would take a yes first and would not lift the figure. The second kind is the large older apartment buildings down on the flats: a street door, a lobby, a stair, and unit doors carrying hardware from three separate remodels. That is the same $119 to $205, with the street door inside the figure rather than counted as a second opening, and the cylinder is opened intact because it belongs to the building and not to whoever is standing on the landing. Proof of address is asked for on the doorstep, and it is asked in the same words of a tenant as of an owner. Between leases a rekey is $26 to $42 per cylinder, and the openings that belong to nobody in particular, the lobby door, the laundry room and the mail alcove, go into the tally while the figure is being set.
The commercial avenues are a third map again. Shopfronts stand at the sidewalk in frames that have outlasted three tenants, some with a roll-down grille over them and most with a service door onto the alley at the back. Storefront door locks are $155 to $449 counted per door, so a narrow shop hears one figure and a corner unit with a second entrance hears two, and a business lockout is $129 to $239. A rear exit device that has stopped holding is far more often left dogged, out of length or knocked out of line by a delivery than actually dead, so adjustment comes first; a device genuinely finished is $289 to $739 per door. A door pried overnight is repaired at $165 to $419, taking in the frame, the strike and the cylinder that absorbed the hit, and the shop locks again before the technician leaves. Cars stand at the curb and in the lots behind these avenues all day, which makes a car lockout at $99 to $189 the most frequent single call on the run; give the block and the color of the car. A fob that has gone quiet is usually a coin cell, and a replacement programmed at the vehicle is $89 to $185, a floor level with the $89 visit that never drops beneath it. The hour changes nothing about how a job is booked: $45 sits inside the figure from 8pm to midnight and $80 from midnight to 7am.
Say which Oakland the address is in: a flat or a house on the level blocks, a house up a hill street above the freeway, a unit in an apartment building, or a shop on one of the avenues. For a unit, give the number and say whether the street door and the entry panel still work. For a hill address, say whether a gate stands between the sidewalk and the door.
FAQ
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.