$1,500 For One Door — What My Own Trade Does To You

Fifteen hundred dollars. For one door. On a Tuesday. I read that off a piece of paper standing in a kitchen in Ohio, with the woman who paid it sitting at the table behind me not saying a word. She had been locked out of her own house. She called the first number that came up on her telephone. A man was there in twenty minutes and gone in forty, and he left her with a new lock she did not choose, a hole in her door, and that invoice. The actual work on it was worth about eighty nine dollars. I am Ray Kessler. I fixed doors for a living for thirty five years. I never caught a burglar in my life — I just replaced the doors they came through, about four thousand of them. This one is not like the others I have made. Usually I am telling you what somebody else does to you. Today I am telling you what my own trade does to you. THE ONE THING THAT STOPS IT Pick your locksmith tonight, while nothing is wrong. Telephone a real local shop, ask what he charges to get somebody back into their house after hours, write the number down and put it on the refrigerator. Ten minutes and it costs you nothing. Because this entire business depends on one thing: that you are searching for a locksmith while standing outside in the dark. Take that away and there is nothing left. WHAT WE GO THROUGH 1. Where that telephone call actually goes — the advertisement, the call center in another state, and the unmarked van that gets a cut of your card 2. Why he reaches for the drill first, and why "it is a high security lock, I have to drill it" is almost always a lie 3. The pin tumbler explained in plain English — five brass pins, and why a man who knows what he is doing opens your lock without a scratch on it 4. The invoice read line by line: the service call, the after hours, labor billed by the quarter hour, the "high security cylinder" that is a twenty two dollar blister pack, the drilling surcharge, the fuel charge that is somehow separate from the mileage 5. Why the paper only comes out after the work is done — and why that is choreography, not sloppiness 6. The woman in December, in her slippers, who never told her daughter for a year 7. The cylinder I found in the flowerbed with no wear on it — and what happened when I put her own key in it 8. THE SIX TELLS you can spot while you are still on the telephone 9. The one sentence that ends it: what is the total, in dollars, including parts, before you start — and what a real locksmith does when you ask 10. What the honest version actually costs: a daytime lockout, after hours, rekey versus replace, and what a good deadbolt really runs 11. If it already happened to you: the card, the old lock, the photographs, the licensing board, and the insurance nobody tells you about 12. Where the trade is NOT robbing you — because if I only tell you the bad part, you should not believe the bad part either 13. Locked out right now with nobody to call? Three ways to get a real name from a person instead of an advertisement THE WALKTHROUGH I wrote the whole thing down the way I would say it in your driveway. The telephone call word for word, what to say and in what order, the sentence that makes a fake one hang up on you, what a fair number looks like where you live, when a rekey is the right answer and when a replacement honestly is, plus the letter to send your insurance company afterward and thirty seven fixes around your door that cost nothing at all. It is linked above if you want it. Nothing in this video is a way to open anybody's door. It is a way to keep from being taken at yours. If this saved you a service call, subscribe. I do one of these when I have something worth saying. #Locksmith #HomeSecurity #LockedOut #Scams #Deadbolt #HomeownerTips