Locked Out at Five in the Morning With a Shift at Six

In most towns the expensive lockout is the one at midnight. In Gilroy it is the one at twenty to five, because that is when this place goes to work. Crews load out for the fields and the sheds before five. Framers and trades leave for sites that open at seven. Anyone working up in Silicon Valley is in the car by half past five, because the same drive at six takes an hour longer.

So the door that shuts behind you before dawn does not cost you an uncomfortable evening. It costs you a ride that has already gone, a site that starts without you, or ninety minutes sitting in traffic you had beaten. That is a different problem, and it deserves a different answer than being told it is an emergency rate.

This article is the ten minutes before you call, which are worth spending. Almost everything on this list you can check standing on your own step in the dark, and any one of them can end the problem without anybody driving out.

Check the back door and the side gate first, in that order. A surprising share of these calls end here, because the door people pull shut behind them is the one they use, and the one they never lock is the one they forgot about. Take a torch: at five in the morning a latch that is actually open looks identical to one that is not.

Then the garage. If the overhead door still works from the remote in the car, the service door in the side wall or the door into the house may be unlocked. If the opener is dead, do not stand there working the remote: a dead opener before dawn is usually power or a tired battery, and neither is going to change in the next five minutes.

Then the spare, honestly. Not where it should be, but where it actually is: a neighbour, a relative two streets away, a lockbox on a fence, a jacket in the truck. If the answer is that nobody has one, that is worth knowing now, because it changes what you want done when the technician arrives.

A house lockout here is $119 to $209, with the $89 visit already inside the figure rather than added underneath. Between four and seven in the morning that carries $40 on top, so the plain version is $159.

The important part is the comparison. Between eight in the evening and midnight, the same job also carries $40. Only after midnight does it become $70. Early morning is deliberately priced level with an evening rather than as a night call, because in a town where half the working population is up before six, charging them a panic premium for that would be dishonest.

You hear the figure on the call, before the van moves, with the hour already counted. Nothing is added while you stand outside, and the number on the receipt is the number you were told.

Opening the door is half the job. The other half is that next Tuesday is not a repeat. Get a key cut at the van before the technician leaves — it takes a few minutes while the equipment is already out and it is the cheapest insurance on this page.

If you are carrying one key for three doors, this is the moment to fix it. A rekey is $25 to $41 per cylinder with the second and third at the low end, and one key for the front door, the garage service door and the gate means one thing to check for before you pull the door shut.

And if the key you use has been needing force for a few weeks, say so while somebody is standing there. That is a lock telling you something, and dealing with it in daylight costs a fraction of dealing with it at half five when it finally refuses.