Palo Alto neighborhood · 24/7
College Terrace locksmith service on the grid beside campus, where leases end in June and the bikes outnumber the cars
The small grid between El Camino Real and Stanford Avenue, on streets named for colleges: small houses and cottages from the 1900s onward, faculty and graduate rentals, back units and converted garages, bikes on every porch, and a landlord's rekey each time a lease ends.
23 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
College Terrace is twenty-three minutes by way of Page Mill Road, and its calls follow the academic calendar. In June and September the landlords call: a house with a front door, a back door, a converted garage unit and a shared side gate, rekeyed between tenants at $27 to $45 per cylinder, every door on one key for the incoming lease and the gate pinned so both units can open it. A manager with three houses on one street books them as a single visit and pays the $89 service call once inside the figure. The written line for the owner's file arrives with the receipt.
Between those months the calls come from tenants. A lockout at a back unit at ten at night, with the key on the desk and the owner in another state, is $129 to $219, picked open because the door belongs to the landlord and a drilled cylinder is a conversation nobody wants to have. An ID and the lease on a phone are asked for at the door. A door that stopped latching after a wet week is a swollen slab or a strike out of line, not a lock, and it is planed or shifted rather than replaced. A bike lock whose key went missing is cut off in the same visit.
The houses are small and the hardware is mixed: a 1950s knob, a deadbolt from a hardware store, a rim latch on the back unit. Where a landlord wants to stop meeting tenants with a ring of keys, a smart lock at $189 to $479 goes on the unit door with a code per lease and a mechanical key beneath it. Cars on the street and in the lots along El Camino bring lockouts at $105 to $179. Evening calls carry $55 between 8pm and midnight and $90 overnight, inside the figure said on the call.
Say whether your door is the main house, a back unit or a converted garage, and whether the side gate is shared. If you rent, have your ID and the lease on your phone ready at the door; both are asked for.
Most requested in College Terrace
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
What people ask before they call
How long until the van reaches my part of Palo Alto?+
Twenty-two minutes is the average across the city, because the van is based in Midtown and Palo Alto is compact. Midtown itself sees the van in about 14 minutes, Old Palo Alto in 16, Professorville and Stanford in 18, Downtown and the Eichler tracts of South Palo Alto in 22, Crescent Park in 22, College Terrace and East Palo Alto in 23, Barron Park and Menlo Park in 25. Los Altos runs about 27 and Mountain View about 29, and Palo Alto Hills takes longer than any of them because of Page Mill Road. The window in your text comes from where the van is at that moment, not from the average.
Will the lock be drilled?+
Only when the mechanism leaves no other way, and only after you agree. Residential deadbolts, apartment cylinders, the mortise sets in Professorville and Old Palo Alto, aluminum storefront hardware, and most car doors and safes open by picking, decoding, manipulation or bypass, and go on working afterward. Drilling becomes the question when a cylinder is high-security, already damaged, or seized by a snapped key. In that case the technician explains what the lock is doing, names the replacement part and its grade, and the figure stays where it was said on the call.
What does the figure on the call include, and what could move it?+
The $89 service call, the labor, the parts fitted and any evening or overnight hour, as one figure said on the call. A side gate, a long driveway, a garage level or a building lobby does not change it. The only thing that adds to it is a second job you ask for after the technician arrives, such as rekeying the back door once the front door has been opened. That is quoted as its own figure and started only when you say yes.
Is it more after 8pm, on a weekend or on a holiday?+
Weekends and holidays are charged at daytime figures. Arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $55, and between midnight and 7am adds $90. Both are already inside the figure said on the call. A house lockout that would be $129 during the day is said as $184 in the evening and $219 overnight, and that is the figure on the receipt.
Can a housekeeper, a property manager or a landlord act for the owner?+
Yes, with confirmation. For a house or an apartment: photo ID with the address, or ID plus a lease, a utility bill or addressed mail on your phone. For a car: ID plus the registration or an insurance card, digital is fine. For a shop, an office or a lab: ID plus a lease, a business license, or confirmation from the property manager or the company. A housekeeper or a property manager holding keys on the owner's behalf may authorize the work if the owner confirms by text or email, or if the manager's name appears on the lease or the management agreement. The receipt can be addressed to the owner, the manager or both. Without one of those the door stays closed.
Our Professorville house still has its original hardware. Does it have to come out?+
Almost never. The mortise sets on the houses south of downtown were built to be taken apart, cleaned and put back. The case comes out of its pocket, the springs are replaced, the levers re-tensioned, and the cylinder rekeyed so old keys stop working, while the brass plate and the glass knob stay on the door. A latch that no longer catches is usually a worn strike, not a failed lock. If the case is beyond repair, a new mortise body is sized to the pocket already cut, so nothing new is cut into the door. Describe the door on the call and the figure is said for the likely route.
Our Eichler has a sliding glass door and an atrium door. What can be done with them?+
Quite a lot. The sliding doors on the tracts in Greenmeadow, Fairmeadow and Green Gables take a proper keyed lock or a secondary foot bolt without any change to the glass or the track, and the atrium doors take a standard deadbolt bore if they do not have one already. The van carries the sliding-door locks and the narrow-stile hardware those doors need. The technician measures the stile and the track before naming the part, and the glass is not touched.
Do you come to the Stanford Shopping Center lots, the Caltrain lots and Town & Country?+
Yes. Car lockouts, key cutting and fob programming are done in the Stanford Shopping Center lots, the Caltrain lots along Alma Street, Town & Country Village, the garages downtown and the lots at Stanford Hospital. Say which lot and roughly where the car is. For a gated garage under an apartment building, have someone ready to let the van in. The Shopping Center on a Saturday afternoon is honestly slower, and the window in your text will say so. The figure does not change for any of it.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one figure, and the lock kept whole
Calls answered 24/7 across Palo Alto, Stanford and the towns beside them. The $89 service call, the labor and the parts are inside the figure said on the call, the lock is opened without drilling wherever it allows, and the receipt repeats the figure.