Every price we charge in Berkeley, published.

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.

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.