Palo Alto neighborhood · 24/7
Downtown Palo Alto and University Avenue locksmith calls, from a restaurant alley door after the last cover to an apartment up a stair beside a shop
University Avenue between the Caltrain station and Middlefield Road, with the side streets off it: shop fronts and restaurants at the sidewalk, offices and apartments on the floors above, city garages on the cross streets, the Caltrain lots along Alma Street, and a second wave of calls once the kitchens close.
22 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
University Avenue is twenty-two minutes from Midtown and keeps restaurant hours, so its calls arrive at ten in the morning and again near midnight. A shop front here is an aluminum door with a glass panel, hung in a frame that has outlasted several tenants and one or two remodels. The fault that comes back most is a deadlatch that stops a hair short of its keeper because the closer has lost its strength; the closer and the keeper are adjusted before any part is condemned, and a worn cylinder is replaced and pinned to the shop key. Storefront door work runs $159 to $479. A business lockout, when the only key went home in a server's apron, is $139 to $255, and between 8pm and midnight the $55 evening supplement already sits inside that figure. A panic bar on the alley door is $305 to $789 per device, and a bar that has stopped latching is reset before it is replaced.
The floors above are offices and apartments reached by a narrow street door and a stair. The street door belongs to the building and usually carries an intercom; the unit door carries a knob and a deadbolt fitted in different decades. A lockout at the unit door is $129 to $219, and it is picked open before any other method is discussed. A rekey between tenants is $27 to $45 per cylinder, and a manager who books three units off the same stair pays the $89 visit once inside a single figure. Whether the street door and the intercom work is asked early on the call, because a unit door cannot be reached through a panel that does not answer.
The garages on the cross streets and the Caltrain lots along Alma Street hold the cars for dinner and for the last train south. A car lockout in either is $105 to $179, with the garage level and the nearest stair given on the call. A fob that has stopped being heard after a long evening is $89 to $195 to program a replacement, once a fresh coin cell has been tried in the old one. The van takes the white zone on the side street or the ground floor of the garage, and the case is carried the rest of the way. Arrival is about twenty-two minutes, and the figure said on the call already contains the $89 service call.
Give the block of University Avenue and say which door: the shop front, the street door to the stair, or the alley door at the back. For a garage, give the level and the nearest stair, and say whether the ramps are still open at this hour.
Most requested in Downtown & University Avenue
Call for Downtown & University AvenueNearby
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.