Mountain View neighborhood · 24/7
Shoreline West: one block holds a bungalow with a plain deadbolt and a courtyard building where four doors read a fob
The stretch between downtown and the bay, where the two halves of the city sit on the same street: single-story houses from the middle of the last century, two- and three-story apartment courts built around a parking bay, a few newer buildings with a glass lobby and a gated deck, and a great deal of rented housing on every kind of block. Fourteen minutes.
~14 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Nowhere else in the city puts the contrast this close together. On one side of a street is a low house with a driveway and a front door that has carried the same knob and deadbolt for decades. Directly opposite is a courtyard building where a resident touches a fob at the street gate, again at the stair door and sometimes again at a laundry room, and the only metal key on the ring is the one for the apartment itself. Both are worked on the same afternoon and both are on the same published list. What changes is the first question on the call, which is not what kind of lock you have but how many doors stand between the sidewalk and where you are trying to get to.
The other thing this neighborhood produces is turnover, and turnover here is not a key job. When somebody moves out of one of the buildings, nobody cuts a new key. The old credential is struck off a list and a new one is handed over, and the hardware on the door is never touched. That is the building's own work and it belongs to whoever runs the building, not to a locksmith, and saying so on the phone saves a wasted visit. On the houses across the street the same event is still an hour of pinning: repinning is $32–$50 per cylinder, everything after the first at the low end, and it covers the front, the back, the garage side door and the gate.
What does come to us in the buildings is the half a list cannot reach. Under most readers there is a mechanical cylinder, and it is there for the morning the reader has no power or the board behind it has quit. In this neighborhood that cylinder is frequently one nobody has a cut key for, because the only key lives in a management office and has never been tried. None of this is an argument against the reader. The reader works, and it works for years at a time. The argument is only that the backup deserves the same five minutes of attention: a key cut and pinned, one turn to prove it, and a note of where it hangs. Where the cylinder is seized or has been packed with weather, replacement is $133–$345.
Lockouts here split the same way as everything else. If it is your own apartment door, it is picked open rather than drilled, you are asked to show who you are at the step, and it is $138–$252 with the $89 inside that. If you are outside on the sidewalk with a dead fob and a gate between you and the building, the first move is getting somebody to let you in, and that is worth starting while still on the phone rather than at fourteen minutes past. Between eight at night and midnight add $52, after midnight $92, both counted inside the figure you hear before the van sets off. Ninety days on the workmanship.
Say how many doors stand between you and where you are going, and which one stopped you. If it is a street gate or a stair door, say whether anyone in the building can let you in. If it is your own apartment door, have identification ready. For a house on these blocks, give the cross street and say what the front door carries.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Shoreline West
My fob has stopped opening the street gate. Can you make it work again?+
No, and that is not a dodge. The fob is on a list held by the building, and adding or restoring a credential is the building's own job with its own office. What we can do is get you to your own door and deal with the mechanical side, which is the cylinder under the reader, the cylinder in your apartment door and anything that has seized. Tell us on the call which of the two you actually need.
There is a keyhole under the panel at our entry but nobody has a key for it.+
Common in this part of town, and it is the sort of thing that gets discovered on the worst possible morning. The cylinder can be examined, cleaned and a working key cut and pinned so the backup is real rather than theoretical, and if it has seized past that it is replaced at $133–$345. The request has to come from whoever is responsible for the entry, since it is a shared door, and that is settled in one message on the call.
I rent one of the houses here and I am locked out at two in the morning.+
A lockout at the door you live behind is yours to arrange, and it is $138–$252 with the $89 service call and the overnight $92 both already inside the figure quoted before we leave. The door is picked open, not drilled, and identification is asked for at the step. Changing or repinning the cylinder afterward is a different matter and needs the owner, which we sort out separately rather than at your doorstep at two.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say what the door reads, and the rest of the call is short
Mountain View and the mid-Peninsula, at any hour. A fob, a card, a code or a plain key, and how many doors stand between the sidewalk and you — that decides the work, and the work decides the number. The number comes back on the same call with the $89 call-out and the clock already inside it, and it is the number on the receipt. The labor carries 90 days, in writing.