Top Traits to Look Out for When Considering Locksmiths

The relationship you share with your locksmith is a sacred one that should ideally stand the test of time; surprisingly, choosing a locksmith for your home, business, and valuables is trickier than it should be. For a lot of Americans, the only way to ensure that you deal with only the best of the best is to get professional advice.

After a quick search on your favorite search engine about locksmiths, you’re sure to come across a few articles, blog posts, or videos reporting on bad experiences with locksmiths or locksmith service providers. This piece was created in the spirit of transparency and truthfulness, so we’re not going to mislead you.

Yes, there are people on the internet posing to be legitimate, registered locksmiths, but not all of them are. We’ve decided to share a few tips on how to settle on the perfect locksmith for your needs.

Without much ado, they include:

1. Location

When considering a locksmith for your home, business, or automobile, it’s essential to keep in mind their physical location’s distance from your home or enterprise. It’s counter-intuitive for your locksmith to live 90 miles or multiple towns away from you; as a matter of fact, a general rule of thumb is that it should take a locksmith no more than thirty to fifty minutes to drive to your location.

For example, a locksmith located in Brooklyn can serve residents of Brooklyn and the four other boroughs of New York. Proximity to your location is especially crucial in the case of an emergency. Imagine your home’s security was compromised in the middle of the night; you’ll need your locksmith to be at your location in the shortest amount of time possible.

As important as location is, it’s not all; there’s more to picking a locksmith than proximity.

2. Range of Service

Most people do not understand how multi-faceted locksmithing is. We have different branches on the locksmithing tree, and for a locksmith to compete in today’s market, they should offer all or most of the following services.

Residential locksmithing has to do with the security and protection of homes, buildings, apartments, and trailers. Generally, if you need to protect living spaces, then what you need is a residential locksmith. The job of a residential locksmith is to keep your castle protected at all times. On the other hand, commercial locksmithing deals with safeguarding businesses. Are you a busy company owner? If your answer is yes, you definitely need a commercial locksmith to ensure that you stay one step ahead of burglars. Automotive locksmithing has to do with the protection of vehicles.

Even if a locksmith offers all of the services above, it’s incomplete until they offer 24/7 emergency services. As we all know, thieves, burglars, and the likes enjoy working during odd hours, so it’s a must-have.

3. Price

The reality is that the vast majority of us will prefer to pay as little as possible for most goods and services. It’s with that in mind that we all consider price when choosing a locksmith. A quick online search for locksmiths near you will give you a plethora of options at different rates.

If the price is too high, we don’t advise you to indulge. More often than not, paying an outrageous amount doesn’t necessarily guarantee superior service. But on the other hand, if the price a locksmith is offering is too good to be true, then it probably is; there are a lot of unregistered locksmiths out there that bait customers with low prices just to overcharge them when they get to their location.

Make a few calls to local locksmiths and figure out the average price—that’s a good starting point to ensure that you get the best value for your money. If searching on the internet, glance over the first ten or dozen results and mentally figure out the average of what they are offering.

4. Size

The size of the locksmith service can actually help you make your decision. A medium-large locksmith service with multiple locksmiths or associates can afford to have people working at every point throughout the day. Thus, if you have an emergency at 2:44am, you can be rest assured that a locksmith will be at your location in the shortest time possible.

Size can also show how excellent a locksmith service is. However, this isn’t always the case; no business can grow if they fail to offer quality service to their customers. This is especially true in the locksmithing business. In the locksmithing business, reputation is essential.

5. Reputation

Reputation is as vital in locksmithing as it is in most other industries, and the beauty of reputation is that you can’t fake it. A neighbor that cares about you will never recommend a bad service provider to you. Meanwhile, friends and family members can help you decide on service providers by supporting those they’ve worked with or heard good things about.

As a matter of fact, a locksmith that cares about maintaining their reputation will never try underhanded or immoral things with you—they’ll go out of their way to give you superior service. The next time you’re considering a barber, baker, or even locksmith, you should consider asking friends and family for recommendations.

Building a solid reputation isn’t a short-term endeavor, and great locksmiths understand that it’s a lifelong endeavor. Locksmiths can display their reputation through customer feedback on their online platforms.

6. Online Presence

Welcome to the ’20s, where everyone and their grandparents are online. The easiest, cheapest, and most surefire way to find and vet locksmiths is online. You’re reading this article about choosing a locksmith–-on the internet.

Most locksmith services have developed an online presence. It can be simple profiles on social networks or convoluted corporate websites. Either way, locksmith service providers around you are all online, and those that aren’t are not doing their business much good. If you’re in the market for a locksmith for your security needs, you might want to consider turning on your location and searching for locksmiths on Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

Quick disclaimer: social media is a double-edged sword, as there aren’t many checks and balances to filter out genuine from fake, and a lot of unscrupulous individuals successfully deceive algorithms and appear on actual searches, so be careful.

7. Emergency Service

Admittedly, we mentioned emergency 24-hour services earlier in this piece, but we feel a need to reiterate and drive the idea home. Without mincing words, if you want to get the best value for your money, always go with a locksmith offering emergency/24-hour services over one that doesn’t.

For instance, if you have two genuine commercial locksmiths within 10 miles of your business, one of them costs slightly less but doesn’t offer 24-hour services. In contrast, the other costs somewhat more—and considerably more outside regular working hours—but provides 24-hour services. We strongly advise you to consider going with the 24-hour locksmith whenever you’re faced with such a dilemma. All things being equal, if you ever have an attempted break-in at 3 am, you’ll be glad you went with the locksmith offering emergency 24-hour services.

This brings us to the next tip:

8. Love & Passion

Our eighth and final tip on choosing the ideal locksmith is in more ways than one the most important, but it’s also notorious for being convoluted to pinpoint or calculate. Most great locksmiths today aren’t at the top of their industry because of how much money they make (there are undoubtedly better-paying jobs) or how glamorous their job is. They are great because of the love they have for this great craft. Locksmiths that aren’t passionate about keeping the lives and properties of hardworking, everyday Americans safe can never truly be great.

There isn’t an exact science that helps us identify locksmiths that are more passionate about their craft than others—you’ll just have to use your intuition to make the right decision and see through facades. On our quest to learn more about passionate locksmiths, we were able to speak to the principal locksmith at Door N Key Locksmith, located in West Palm Beach, FL. When we asked him about what motivates locksmiths in his practice, he said that “the look of relief and joy on the faces of residents of West Palm Beach, FL, after we complete a job, knowing that they can go to sleep without worry is what drives us here at Door N Key Locksmith West Palm Beach.”

In Conclusion

Even if you follow all the guidelines, it doesn’t mean that you’ll come across satisfactory locksmiths. Some individuals might completely disregard everything we’ve listed here and still come out on top; after all is said and done, it’s essential to keep in mind that these tips are here to tip the scale in your favor.

There are great locksmiths out there, and we hope this piece can lead you to them, because at the end of the day, you deserve to have a safe vehicle, business, and home.

Name: Door N Key Locksmith

Address: West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Phone: (561) 510-4642

Website: www.doornkey.com