Lock Rekeying in San Leandro

The lock is rarely the problem. The keys are. A rekey changes the keys and keeps the locks, and this city gives that job to every kind of owner. A fourplex off Bancroft turning over on a Saturday with the new tenant arriving Sunday. A family taking the keys to a Best Manor house that has been in one name since the forties, with no way of counting the copies cut over that time. A tenant near Bayfair whose roommate moved out and left the ring behind, or says they did. A management company taking a block on East 14th off another company books. Estudillo Security repins the cylinders already hanging in your doors: the old keys stop turning and nothing on the door looks different afterward.

The work happens at a bench in the van, a few steps from the door. The plug comes out of the cylinder on a follower, the old bottom pins drop into a cup, and a fresh set goes in to a key that did not exist that morning. A Kwikset or a Schlage off a Washington Manor tract door takes about as long as writing the unit number down. Original mortise cylinders on Estudillo Avenue and through Broadmoor are repinned and kept rather than thrown away, as long as the plug still turns clean; if it drags you hear that at the bench and not next winter. Where a building runs a master key, the master pins are a separate layer and they stay where they are, so the manager key keeps working while the tenant key changes. Mailbox locks get swapped rather than repinned, because most of them come pinned at the factory. Keys are cut at the van. With the cylinders back in their doors the old keys are tried in front of you and fail, and that, rather than the receipt, is the proof.

Rekeying is $26 to $42 per cylinder, and the $89 service call is counted inside the total rather than added to it. Four doors at the low end come to $104; four doors of heavier hardware come to $168. Because the visit is the floor, a one-bedroom off Bancroft with a deadbolt and a knob does not come to $52 for the pair; that call is $89 and $89 is all of it. If one door carries a keyway the others cannot share, you hear on the call that it either keeps its own key or gets swapped under lock replacement, and which of those you want is yours to decide.

You call and say what happened and where, and how many cylinders there are, or send a photograph of each lock face. The figure is said on the call with the unit it is counted in, per cylinder, with the total named alongside it. The van leaves Davis Street, and a text names the technician and gives a thirty-minute window. The count is confirmed at the door, the cylinders go out to the bench and come back, keys are cut, the old keys are tried and fail, and the receipt shows the figure from the call. For an owner or a manager the receipt is laid out door by door under each unit number, ready to drop into the turnover file.