Locked Out?

 Ok, so you are locked out of your home, business or vehicle. Time is ticking and you need to re-gain access to your property as soon as possible with the least amount of damage possible. What do you do? Here are some things to help you through this process and to make sure that you have the best possibility of getting back in.

To start find a locksmith before you need one! The locksmith industry is not regulated in every state and there are a lot of people that are calling themselves locksmiths that are not. If you are out of town and your local locksmith you have worked with before can't help you, see if they know of someone in the area that you are currently in. If you can not reach your go to locksmith, or you don't have one, look up findalocksmith.com. This site is set up by ALOA (The Associated Locksmiths of America). Any locksmith on this site has been vetted by the leading organization for training locksmiths. The locksmiths on this site are members of ALOA and using one of them will give you the best opportunity to get the job done correctly.

The next step is to make sure you have the proper documentation to prove that you have the authority to gain access to the property. A LEGITIMATE locksmith will require some sort of proof that you are who you say you are. They will also go through processes to verify that you have the legal authority to gain access to the property you are requesting into. It is very important to make sure that if you move that your drivers license is updated with the correct address. If you just purchased a property keep a piece of mail with your name on it that ties you to that address. Take a picture of the closing agreement and keep it on your phone until you have a chance to update your license address. In the case you lock your keys in your car, keep a copy of your insurance card in your wallet that has your vehicles make and model on it. 

Some "locksmiths" will open anything up as long as you have a form of payment. Let that sink in, it only takes a couple of calls from a google search to find someone that is willing to open anything up as long as you have a form of payment. Scary huh? These people are not locksmiths and deserve whatever legal consequences that will eventually come their way. I will make a future post that will go over things to consider to reduce the risk of this.

There are so many reasons you want to make sure that we as legitimate locksmiths require some sort of proof of authorized access. What if there is a domestic abuse situation? What if there is a nasty divorce revenge scenario? What if there is an estate dispute where one of the parties is not wanting to play by the rules? What if someone knows you are out of town and wants to to gain access to your house to perform a theft of your property?

As you can see there are many reasons you would want your locksmith to make sure before they open something up, that they are making sure they are opening for the right person. So when you are locked out and panicking, please understand why the locksmith is requiring different forms of proof before they open something up for you. If you do find someone that is willing to just open up a property for you on your word alone, I would not use that service provider. I have had many people say to me "It's my property and I would not lie to you!" Well in response to that, I don't know you and I can't be 100% sure of that without knowing you.

Another thing you can do is make sure there is a spare key in a secret hiding spot on your property in case of emergency. This also comes in handy if you are out of town and have someone coming over to take care of the pets. I get this call quite frequently and it is a much more difficult process getting all the the things verified to be able to grant access.

In closing be as prepared as you can for when this happens to you. It happens to all of us. It may be a little inconvenient in the moment having to jump through all these hoops just trying to regain access to your own property. To be honest though, the more questions that are asked and the more strict the policies are of the person that has the ability to bypass your locks, the better.

New Home Buyer

 NEW HOME BUYER? 

    If you just recently purchased a new home, congratulations! I'd like to take a moment and go over a few things you might want to consider about your locks on your home. There are some things that you might not have thought about and some things you might have not known could even be an issue. Your home is the number one place where you want to feel safe and comfortable. Here are a few things to consider to make sure that it is.

    First of all, anytime you purchase a new home you want to get it re-keyed. How many times in the past have you given a key out to someone to take care of things while you were away? Everyone has. How can you be sure that when you purchased this house that all copies ever made of the key are accounted for and in you possession? Unless this is a brand new home just built for you, you probably can't. Also if this house is a new build there is another issue we need to go into. When the home builders come through and construct these homes, they almost always CONSTRUCTION MASTER KEY them. Construction master keying is a way to manipulate the lock so that the workers have access to all the homes until they are built and possession is taken over by the owner. At that point when the home owner inserts their key into the lock and turns it, a process happens that voids out the contractors key and the contractor should no longer have access to the property. This is a common practice and does function as intended. The only caveat to that is any time master pins are inserted into a lock it exponentially adds to the number of keys that inadvertently work the lock. Even though the contractor's keys won't work it and your neighbor's keys won't work it, there are quite a few other keys out there that will.

    Secondly, is there one key that currently works all the locks or is there multiple keys? Do you want to have just one key or are you ok with the possibility of multiple? There are many reasons why the house could currently be on multiple keys. In fact when Hood's Locksmith Service goes out to rekey a home it is more time than not that there are multiple keys to the house. Maybe a lock broke and the previous home owner just went to the hardware store and grabbed a new one. Maybe they had a lockout situation and the person that came out to let them back in drilled out the lock and replaced it with whatever they had. There are quite a few scenarios to explain it, just don't automatically assume that they are all on the same key. It is not a common occurrence that I have seen. A locksmith can advise you on what needs to happen to make sure all of your locks operate the way you want them.

    Lastly, maybe you don't want to have to always use a key to access your home. Well there are options for that also. Keypad locks are the new thing everyone seems to want these days. They do offer quite a bit of convenience but do sacrifice a little bit of security. There are many options from Smart Home Wi-Fi enabled, stand alone, audit trails, multi user, and so on. They are very convenient if you are a techy person, but do have some draw backs. Anytime something is hooked up to the internet there is a possibility, even though in most cases a small one that the lock could be accessed by someone you did not give permission to. There are locks that are stand alone that do not hook up Wi-Fi that are more secure, but you need to make sure your pin code is something not easily guessed. You also definitely want to make sure that they have a key override in case the battery happens to die. These locks do have a lot of benefits for certain people and can simplify a lot of would be issues for the on the go person of today.

    In conclusion, It is a really good idea to get those locks re-keyed when you take possession of your new home. Hood's Lock would be glad to assist with the process of finding what solution works best for you and then getting it done for you. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.