I’m constantly torn. On the one hand, I’m good at my job, so I do it as quickly and smoothly as I can, and I hope that the customer sees that and is happy to pay the requested rates. I keep them as low as I can to earn a living, and I see many less skillful locksmiths making a lot more money by being bad, taking a long time, drilling trivial locks open, and so on.
On the other, despite being paid a great hourly rate, I’m not making enough money to buy in the locksmithing gear that I feel I need to provide the great service and range of services that those who call me require.
Take cutting keys. If you do the basic maths, cutting keys is worth a lot of money. You take a blank that costs 50p-£5 and work on it for 3 to 10 minutes and charge £3 to £6 for it. Easy money? Except you have to wait a long time between customers, and have you seen the cost of a key machine? They start at £500, and that is very much the beginners model.
I keep getting calls asking me to cut modern car keys. Alas, at a cost of £150 to £600, losing a key to a modern car can make for a very very bad day. Add to that the cost of actually getting into a car, and you are really sore in the wallet area.
So how can it cost so much for a simple car key? Because it simply isn’t just a key. First we look at the cost of the blank. These range, for just the metal part, between £2 for a plain steel blank, and £6 to £20 for one with a programable chip in it. Then you need to pay out over £1000 for a cutter machine. You need to do a fair few keys to make that worthwhile!
But wait! You can only open the doors with that key! You need to program it! So you ask for that too. Hmm… Well, since the machine costs over £700, that’s going to up the price a bit. But wait! We need the software to program the key to your *model* of car! Yes, that’s another £300 for the codes to write, for example, a Ford key. But you have a Ford? That’s a different key machine required! And it’s the latest model? That means a £300 update to this years codes, rather than using last years some more…
Hopefully, you won’t ever lose your car key, but, if you do, this post might well remind you of why the locksmith isn’t joking around when he tells you it will be expensive.
I’ve skipped other expenses, like teaching your car to forget the old chip and radio codes and take only the new, removing and re-keying all the door, boot, ignition and petrol cap (and even bonnet now!) locks in the case of stolen keys, and the shear time and hassle involved in opening these incredibly secure (to anyone non-destructive) metal boxes with fragile windows (that ensure it is easy to get in destructively!). Oh, and don’t forget that you might need the steering wheel locking bar removed, too!