Four tiers rather than three
Most locksmiths run three tiers: day, evening, night. That works where a town is asleep from ten until seven. It does not describe Gilroy, where a large share of the working population is up and out before six, and where treating everything before seven as a night call means charging the field crews, the trades and the commuters extra for keeping the hours their work requires.
So there are four. Four to seven in the morning is $40 on top. Seven in the morning to eight in the evening is standard. Eight to midnight is $40. Midnight to four is $70. The early window is level with the evening and below the night, deliberately.
The $89 service call sits inside every one of those figures and is never added underneath, which is worth stating plainly because the trick in this trade is a low headline price with a trip charge behind it.
The same job at four hours of the day
A house lockout has a published range of $119 to $209. The plain version of it — ordinary hardware, one exterior door, nothing behind it — is $119 in daylight. At half past five in the morning it is $159. At nine in the evening it is $159. At one in the morning it is $189.
A car lockout runs $99 to $189: $99 in daylight, $139 early, $139 evening, $169 after midnight. A business lockout is $135 to $239: $135, $175, $175, $205. Lock replacement is $112 to $279: $112, $152, $152, $182.
None of those numbers is discovered at the door. You hear one figure on the call with the hour already inside it, and that figure is what appears on the receipt.
Why night genuinely costs more
It is fair to ask why midnight to four is $70 rather than $40 if the early window is not an emergency. The honest answer is that they are different situations, not different attitudes.
A call at half past five reaches a van that is already out, on roads that already have traffic on them, at an hour when this town has a working day underway. A call at half past one wakes somebody up, and the person who takes it will be working the following day as well. The $30 difference is that, and nothing more elaborate.
What that means practically: if your problem can wait four hours, it is cheaper to wait. Nobody will tell you that at one in the morning unless you ask, and it is worth asking anyone you call.
What does not change with the hour
The list itself. Every job has a published range on the pricing page and the hour moves the figure inside it, rather than being a separate line that appears later.
The address does not change the price either. Gilroy, San Martin, Hollister, Aromas, San Juan Bautista and Watsonville all pay the same figures. What the address changes is how long you wait, and that is quoted honestly on the call: 9 to 17 minutes inside town, 14 to San Martin, 24 to Hollister, 26 to Aromas, 28 to San Juan Bautista, 33 over the pass to Watsonville.
And nothing gets added for a second attempt, a side gate, or a door that turned out to be more awkward than it sounded. Where a job genuinely turns out to be different work from what was described, that gets said before it starts, not after it finishes.
Quick answers
If I call at 3:50am, which tier applies?+
The overnight one, $70, because that is when the call reaches us. If it can wait until four, say so and it becomes $40. Whoever answers should tell you that rather than take the higher figure quietly, and if they do not, that tells you something about who you are calling.
Is there a call-out fee on top of the range?+
No. The $89 visit is inside every figure quoted, and there is no separate trip charge. That is the single most common trick in this trade and it is worth checking with anybody you call, not just us.
Need it handled rather than read about?
(669) 356-8920