Lock Rekeying in Hayward

Locks are seldom the problem. Keys are. A rekey changes the keys and keeps the locks, and half this city rents, so the calls come from every side of that. A manager turning a Tennyson fourplex over on a Saturday with the new tenant arriving Sunday. An owner in Burbank taking the keys from a house that has been in one family since the tract was built, with no way of knowing how many copies exist. A tenant in Jackson Triangle whose roommate moved out and left the ring behind, or did not. A management company taking sixty units off another company's books. Eden Locksmith repins the cylinders already hanging in your doors: the old keys stop turning, and nothing on the door looks different afterward.

The work happens on a bench in the van, a few steps from the door. The plug slides out of the cylinder on a follower, the old bottom pins drop into a cup, and a fresh set goes in to a key that did not exist this morning. A Kwikset or a Schlage off a 1950s tract door in Glen Eden takes about as long as it takes to write the unit number down. Original mortise cylinders on Prospect Hill are kept and repinned rather than thrown out, as long as the plug still turns clean; if it drags, you hear that at the bench and not a month later. Where a building runs a master key, the master pins are a separate layer and they stay put, so the manager's key keeps working while the tenant key changes. Mailbox locks get swapped instead of repinned, because most of them come pinned at the factory. Keys are cut at the van. When the cylinders are back in their doors, the old keys are tried in front of you and fail; that, and not the receipt, is the proof.

Rekeying is $24 to $39 per cylinder, with the $89 service call counted inside the total rather than added to it. A four-door house comes to $96 to $156. Because the visit is the floor, two cylinders at $24 do not come to $48; they come to $89, and $89 is the whole figure for that visit. A one-bedroom on Mission with a deadbolt and a knob is the same $89. If one door carries a keyway the others cannot share, you hear on the call that it either keeps its own key or gets swapped under lock replacement, and which of those you want is your call to make.

You call and say what happened and how many cylinders there are, or send a photograph of each lock face. The per-cylinder figure and the total are said on the call. The van leaves Jackson Street, and a text names the technician and gives a thirty-minute window. The count is confirmed at the door, the cylinders go out to the bench and come back, keys are cut, the old keys are tried and fail, and the receipt shows the figure from the call. For an owner or a manager the receipt is laid out door by door under each unit number, ready to drop into the turnover file.