Palo Alto neighborhood · 24/7
Midtown locksmith service, fourteen minutes from where the van waits, for ranch houses, Eichlers and the shops along Middlefield Road
The middle of the city around Middlefield Road and Colorado Avenue: 1950s ranch houses with an attached garage, Eichlers on the side streets, sliding doors onto every yard, the shops at Midtown Center, and the streets where the van sits between calls.
14 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The van is based here, and fourteen minutes is the shortest arrival on the map. A Midtown ranch house has its garage on the front, a door from the garage into the kitchen that latches on its own, a front door that gained a deadbolt around 1985 and a slider onto the patio. The lockout is the garage door: the roll-up is closed, the kitchen door has swung shut, and the family is standing on the driveway with the dog. That is $129 to $219, picked open first. Buyers moving in from apartments ask for every cylinder on one key, and that rekey is $27 to $45 each, with the garage side door and the yard gate in the count.
The Eichlers on the side streets have a flat slab front door with a knob and a deadbolt added later, an atrium gate that shuts behind whoever went to the mailbox, and glass along the entire garden side. The gate is the lockout and the sliders are the weak point; a secondary lock on each slider is a small line added to a rekey visit. A deadbolt on the slab, with a strike screwed into the post rather than the thin jamb, is a replacement at $125 to $329. Smart locks at $189 to $479 go on the door from the garage more often than on the front, so a code can be handed to a sitter for a weekend and retired on Monday.
Midtown Center and the strip along Middlefield bring storefront work at $159 to $479 and a shop lockout at opening at $139 to $255. Cars in the lot bring lockouts at $105 to $179 and a fob programmed at $89 to $195 beside the car. Because the van is minutes away, Midtown gets the late calls fastest: $55 sits inside the figure between 8pm and midnight and $90 overnight, and the $89 service call is already inside whatever figure is said.
Say whether the house is a ranch house or an Eichler and whether the trouble is the front door, the atrium gate or the door from the garage. Give the cross street; the blocks off Middlefield look alike after dark.
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.