Coquitlam hands us two different lockouts. In the towers ringing Lafarge Lake and along Clarke Road your suite has one door and no way round the back. On the older detached streets there are three or four ways in and a stiff forty-year-old cylinder on at least one of them. Either way a licensed technician is assigned on the call itself, the price is settled before the van moves, and the arrival window for your address is given on that same call.
At one in the morning the things that count are that a person picks up, that the figure agreed on the phone is the figure on the invoice, and that the van is already somewhere in Coquitlam. Dispatch is out of Coquitlam Centre, which keeps Austin Heights, Como Lake and Ranch Park short runs whatever the hour. The long ones are the two hillsides, Westwood Plateau and the upper streets off Coast Meridian Road on Burke Mountain, and those are quoted a longer window rather than the same number everybody else hears.
Anything where the door between you and your own property will not open, or will no longer close. These are the versions that turn up most:
A house gives you options. A suite gives you one door. In the concrete around Lafarge Lake and along Pinetree Way, up Clarke Road, and now in Coronation Park, there is no back entry to try, no garage side door somebody might have left on the latch, and no ground-floor window. The lock in front of you is the entire problem.
Where the building's responsibility ends and ours begins is worth knowing before you call. The lobby, the parkade and the elevators run on the strata's or the property manager's fob system, so a fob that has stopped working is theirs to reprogram rather than ours. The larger buildings along the Evergreen Line corridor generally run a master key system as well, with a grand master held by building management or the caretaker for maintenance and emergency access. From the suite door inward is the part that is ours: the entry cylinder, and a storage locker cylinder sitting outside the building system.
Two towers a few blocks apart can still be two different jobs. The 2010s and 2020s buildings by the lake went up with modern door prep and Schlage B-series deadbolts. Between Guildford Way and Glen Drive there are low-rise rental blocks still carrying the pin-tumbler knob locks they were finished with. Say which of those you live in when you call and the right tools are on the van before it leaves.
On the detached stock the useful question is not which door you are locked out of but which door is newest. A Maillardville house near Laval Square can still be running original mortise hardware from the 1930s or 1940s on the front while the back door was changed two owners ago. Austin Heights tells the same story in layers: the knob lock the house was built with in the fifties, a deadbolt added in the eighties, occasionally a third lock after that. Cape Horn above the industrial flat still turns up original mortise hardware from the first build. Harbour Chines renovated in a different order again. A post-war house there that was worked on in the 2000s can carry a modern deadbolt on the front, an original mortise lock on an interior door, and a 1980s Weiser deadbolt on the back entry that was never updated.
It matters at two in the morning because those locks do not all give at the same speed. Opening without damage is the intention on every call and on most residential deadbolts it is what happens, but decades of wear inside a cylinder leave less to work with than a lock fitted last spring, and an honest estimate says so. Where a lock has to come out, replacements for the common residential profiles ride on the van and the decision is put to you first, not reported afterwards.
Say which entrance is yours, too. Basement and garden suites are common through central Coquitlam, each one needing its own deadbolt keyed separately from the main house, and the door somebody is actually standing at is often round the side rather than at the front.
Everything is priced before a van is assigned. What moves a job within its band is the door, the hardware hanging on it and the hour you are calling.
| Service | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Residential lockout (standard deadbolt) | $95 – $160 |
| Residential lockout (high-security / smart lock) | $135 – $220 |
| Car lockout (most makes) | $95 – $160 |
| Car lockout (newer push-start / complex entry) | $130 – $200 |
| Break-in emergency re-secure (lock replaced) | $160 – $300 |
| All keys lost, cylinder rekeyed | $110 – $185 |
| Broken key extraction | $90 – $150 |
| Commercial lockout (office / retail) | $120 – $250 |
A late-night or weekend call carries the standard after-hours rate, and that rate goes into the quote you hear on the phone instead of appearing on the invoice afterwards. The standard lockout bands are for the lockout itself, and the total for your address is confirmed on the call before a technician is sent, so what you agree to on the phone is what the invoice says.
No app, no callback queue, no two-hour arrival window.
Which door it is: suite, front, rear, garage side, or a car. In a tower, the street number of the building and the number on your own door. On a house, whether anything looks forced. Three or four answers settle the band and the arrival window.
Not a dispatcher who rings back, and not a subcontractor. Picks, a key cutting machine and common replacement cylinders are already aboard, which is why most of these calls finish on the first visit rather than turning into a morning appointment.
Getting you in is half the job. Where keys are lost or a door has been forced, the property leaves the visit locking properly, with the cylinder rekeyed or the lock set changed as the situation needs.
A door that has been forced is not a door that locks, even when the key still turns in it. Usually the cylinder survived and the jamb did not: the strike plate has torn out of soft wood and the bolt now throws into nothing. That part is tonight, and it comes off truck stock, a replacement cylinder or a whole lock set where the hardware took the damage, and a deeper strike plate screwed into framing rather than into the trim that gave way.
Where the split has run further into the frame than a strike plate can bridge, you get told so at the door instead of being handed a patch that fails again by spring, and that carpentry belongs to door repair in daylight. The locking is what cannot wait. Nobody should be asked to sleep behind a door that closes without holding.
On a property with a basement or garden suite, which through the central neighbourhoods is a large share of them, a forced rear entry is two households at once. When that lock is replaced the suite keeps a key of its own, separate from the main house, so a tenant's key opens their own entrance and stops there.
All fourteen areas listed below are dispatched to at the same hours, and two of them earn an extra sentence on the call. The streets ringing Mundy Park are quiet ones, and along the southern and eastern edges of the park they are quieter still, with little passing traffic, so being locked out there feels more isolating than the same lockout on Austin Avenue. Stand somewhere lit if you can, and tell us which road you turned off.
The upper part of Eagle Ridge is the other one. Driveways run long and entrances sit well back from the road, so a technician can be outside the right house without either of you seeing the other. Worth mentioning on the call whether your door is visible from the street.
Dispatch runs out of Coquitlam Centre, and the window you are given on the call is for your street, worked out from where the nearest technician is at that moment. A Ranch Park driveway and an address on the upper Burke Mountain streets on a January night are not the same drive, and you are told which one you are before you agree to wait.
Manipulating the lock open is the intention and on most residential deadbolts it is also the outcome. Older hardware is the exception worth flagging. A worn cylinder on a Maillardville or Cape Horn original may not give, and where it will not, drilling destroys that cylinder. You hear that, and the cost of the replacement going back in, before anything touches the door.
Photo identification matching the address, or recent addressed post such as a utility bill or a lease. In a tower where your identification still carries a previous address, a copy of the lease or a word from the building manager covers it. For a vehicle, the registration in your name. Identity gets checked on every job without exception. A locksmith who does not ask is the reason a door is worth locking in the first place.
Leave it alone. The broken half normally sits in the plug where an extractor can catch it, while pliers or a thin blade tend to push it deeper or snap it again against the pins, turning a short extraction into a cylinder that has to be replaced. Do not feed the other half of the key in after it either. Extraction has its own row in the table above and it is usually a short visit.
Yes, and the lock does not have to be opened with a key first. It can be picked, impressioned, or drilled as a last resort, then rekeyed there and then so anything cut before opens nothing. Blanks for the common residential profiles are cut at the door. If you would rather replace the hardware outright than rekey it, that gets priced on site and the difference explained.
The after-hours rate is real and it is inside the quote you are given on the phone. What there is not is a second layer on top of it: no holiday multiplier, and nothing added at the door that was not in the figure quoted on the phone. The number you agree to before the van moves is the number at the end of it.
Treat it as one. The pry mark at the strike is the part you can see. What matters is whether the bolt still throws its full length into solid wood behind the plate, and a door that closes and latches while holding on a split jamb will open under a shoulder. That difference is not something anyone can judge from the outside, and it costs one call to have it looked at the same night.
Every neighbourhood below is covered around the clock, from the Town Centre towers to the top of Burke Mountain.
Rekeys, upgrades, safes and automotive, booked by appointment with the same licensed technician.