The Berkeley locksmith who settles the price before touching the lock.

Nineteen minutes is the average across the city. Downtown is usually 12, Southside and Telegraph 14, North Berkeley 15, Elmwood and West Berkeley 16, Thousand Oaks and Westbrae 18, Claremont 20. The Berkeley Hills run longer, around 26 minutes, because the roads above Grizzly Peak Blvd and Euclid Ave wind and the last stretch is often stairs. Albany is about 17, Kensington 21, El Cerrito 20, Emeryville 18 and Richmond Annex 24. Traffic on University Ave or a backed-up I-80 ramp can stretch any of these, and the window you are given on the call reflects conditions at that moment rather than an average.

Four things: the $89 service call, the labour, the parts that go into the door, and any evening or overnight hour. They are combined into one number before you say yes, which is why the service call never turns up separately at the end. The figure changes only if you ask for additional work once the technician is on site, such as rekeying the rest of the house after a lockout. That is quoted as its own line and started only after you agree to it.

Weekends and holidays are charged at ordinary hours. Arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $35, and arrival between midnight and 7am adds $70. Both are folded into the figure at the time you agree to it, so a $119 house lockout is $154 in the evening and $189 overnight, and the technician does not produce a different number at the door.

Only if you agree to it after picking has been tried. Residential deadbolts, apartment cylinders, mortise locks, most aluminum storefront hardware and most car doors open with picks, decoders, bypass tools or air wedges, and the hardware carries on working. Drilling becomes the option when a cylinder is already damaged, high-security, or seized from corrosion or a snapped key. In that case the technician explains what is wrong with the mechanism and what the replacement part costs, and the total stays at the figure agreed on the call.

For a house or apartment: photo ID showing the address, or ID plus a lease, a utility bill or addressed mail on your phone if the ID says somewhere else. For a car: ID plus registration or an insurance card, digital is fine. For a business or a lab: ID plus a lease, a business licence or confirmation from the owner or property manager. If none of that can be produced, the lock stays shut. This is the same check that protects your own door.

Rekeying repins the cylinders you already own so every old key stops turning, at $22 to $37 per cylinder with the $89 visit counted inside the total. For a shared house that usually means the front door, the unit door, the mailbox and any storage or bike-room lock keyed alike, so each incoming tenant carries one key. A building master, if you run one, keeps working. The receipt lists each cylinder by door, which is the form most landlords and property files want. Turnover weeks in August and January book up, so a few days of notice helps.

More often than people expect. Mortise and rim locks from the 1900s to the 1920s can be opened up, cleaned, re-sprung and rekeyed on site, and worn levers, followers and spindles are frequently replaceable. Interior doors with skeleton-key warded locks can be fitted with a working key rather than replaced. When a case is cracked or the parts genuinely no longer exist, a modern mortise body is sized to the existing pocket so the original plate, knob and door face are untouched. Which route applies is decided at the door, with the figure settled first either way.

Yes to both. Car lockouts, key cutting and fob programming are done in the Downtown Berkeley and North Berkeley BART garages, in shop lots and on residential streets; say which level and roughly where the car sits when you call. For hillside addresses above Grizzly Peak or off Arlington Ave, mention the gate, the stair count and whether the garage is below the house, because it changes the arrival estimate and the tools brought up. It does not change the figure. There is no charge for stairs, gates or distance.