The van carries a cutting machine and blanks for the profiles Coquitlam actually runs, so house, suite, mailbox, locker and padlock keys get cut where you are standing. Plenty of these calls are not about one key. They are about a ring nobody can fully account for.
Cutting is tracing, and the machine traces whatever it is handed. We ask for the best original you own rather than whatever is loose in a drawer, check the finished cut on a gauge, and try it in the lock it belongs to before it goes on your ring.
What arrives at a Coquitlam key cutting call is often not one key. It is a ring, and frequently nobody on the property can say which of them came from the factory or how many copies of each are out there. Different parts of the city reach that state by different routes. Around the Town Centre stations and along the Burquitlam corridor it is churn that does it, because a transit hub runs a constant cycle of tenancies and a suite key that has been through several move-ins has usually been copied at each one, by people who were perfectly entitled to do it. On the detached streets off Como Lake Avenue the cause is the reverse. Many owners along that corridor have been in the same house a decade or more, so the key in the pocket is often the one handed over at closing, and the spare cut from it years ago now lives with a neighbour, a grown child, or nobody can remember. Around the Mundy Park edge it grows outward instead, because the side gates and rear entries on the park boundary carry padlocks of their own.
Every duplicate is a tracing of the last one, and the error compounds quietly. Two or three generations down the blade still looks right while the cuts sit a few thousandths shallow. Where that shows up first in Coquitlam is the newest stock: a suite cylinder in a Clarke Road or Pinetree Way tower runs tighter tolerances than a forty year old Kwikset in Ranch Park, so it refuses a sloppy copy while the older lock carries on accepting one. If a key has started needing a jiggle in one of those newer buildings, the key is worth ruling out before the cylinder is, and when that is all it was, a fresh cut taken from the best original you hold settles it for the price of a blank.
The opposite case turns up in Maillardville and Cape Horn, where the key in your hand may be the last original thing on the door. Copying a blade that has worn round at the shoulders copies the wear along with everything else, so there we read the cylinder and cut to what the lock is actually pinned to. Landlords running a changeover across several older Maillardville units get the same treatment door by door, a fresh cut per lock rather than a key handed down the building from tenant to tenant.
Sometimes the wear runs the other way and no copy will settle it. A cylinder that has been rekeyed several times can lose consistency in its pins and end up past the point where a fresh key rescues it. A door that has started binding after a wet winter is a different matter, usually the frame rather than the lock, and that gets checked at the strike plate before anything is cut. When the copy that came off the van is the third key in a row to feel wrong in the same door, the door is telling you something and cutting a fourth is not the answer.
| Key type | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Standard house or door key (per copy) | $5–$15 |
| Mailbox, padlock or cabinet key | $8–$20 |
| Per key when cutting five or more | $4–$10 |
| Dimple keys, Mul-T-Lock, Kaba and similar profiles | $20–$45 |
| High-security or restricted key, with the keyholder's authorization | $30–$70 |
| Decoded from the lock or cut to code, no original | $40–$90 |
Those bands cover the blank and the cutting. A plain residential profile sits at the bottom of its band and a controlled or dimple profile sits at the top, because the blank costs more and the tolerances are tighter. The call out itself is quoted on the phone once you say where you are and how many keys you want. Car keys are priced separately further down, since a chip is not a cut.
Photograph the head or read out what is stamped on it. The name on the key decides the blank, and the blank decides whether this is a job finished on the visit or one that needs ordering first. If two keys are going onto the van, say so, because the second one is frequently a different profile from the first.
A street address is plenty on the regular grid in Austin Heights and on the straightforward streets of Ranch Park. Park edge addresses are the exception, because routing apps handle the cul de sacs on the south and east sides of Mundy Park badly, so give us the number on the house and the cross street closest to it. In a tower, say whether the copy is for the suite deadbolt or for a keyed storage locker, because the two are frequently different profiles.
Each copy comes off the wheel, goes on a gauge, and then into the lock it was cut for, turned from the outside with the door shut. Anything that drags gets cut again before the van packs up. That is the whole argument for cutting at the door: the lock is right there to test against.
A restricted profile puts the authority to copy a key somewhere other than with whoever is holding it, which is the entire purpose of the thing. So the question we have to settle before cutting is not whether the key is yours to carry but whether it is yours to copy, and those are different answers for an owner, a tenant and a strata council. An owner speaks for their own system. A tenant does not, and the approval has to come from the manager or the council that registered the keys in the first place. Sorting that out belongs at the booking rather than on the doorstep, because the cutting is the quick part of a restricted job and the permission is not.
Some Coquitlam key cutting starts with nothing to trace at all. Coronation Park is the clearest example, because the older single family houses on Cottonwood Avenue and the side streets off it may still be with their first or second owner, so the key cut when the house was built can be the only one that ever existed, and once it is gone there is nothing to copy. The oldest Cape Horn houses above the industrial flat carry the same risk, since some are still on the hardware the builder fitted, and a second key may never have been cut in all the time since.
None of that means the cylinder has to be replaced. A lock carries its own bitting inside it, so the cylinder gets read and a key cut to what it is actually pinned to, or cut to the code where a code still exists for the hardware. It is slower than tracing a key and it is priced accordingly, but it leaves a working lock in the door instead of a hole where one used to be. If what you want at the end of it is one key rather than a replacement for each of several, that is a rekey and it gets quoted as its own job.
A car key is two things sharing one body. There is a blade, which our machine cuts like any other, and there is a chip the vehicle's immobiliser has to be taught to recognise before the engine will turn over. Cut the blade alone and you own a key that opens the door, sits in the ignition and does nothing further. That is different equipment and a different job, so a spare for the car in a Lafarge Lake parkade or a Burke Mountain driveway belongs on car key replacement rather than here.
Every area below sits inside the coverage zone. Each has its own page covering the hardware on those streets and how the run there actually goes.
When more keys is the wrong answer, one of these is usually the right one.