How Much Does a Locksmith Cost?

Series Summary

Nothing is worse than that sinking feeling you get when you’re 20 minutes late for work, you’ve already spilled half of breakfast all over your new outfit, traffic was horrendous … and you’ve just realized that you locked your keys in the car. You may mumble a few expletives under your breath, kick the tires, huff and puff. But eventually, you have to figure out what you’re going to do about it. As you make your way into the office, you consider calling a locksmith and paying a hefty sum of money to solve the problem. You figure that it will be a well learned lesson and you’ll pay more attention in the future. Or, you might try some of the techniques you’ll see in this video series.

In these free auto-lockout emergency videos, learn what to do when you’ve locked your keys in the car—aside from calling a locksmith. Our expert will show you how to use special tools, usually readily available to the public, to unlock your car free of charge. Learn how to use everything from a slim jim to a lasso tool to finagle your way through the door jamb and back into your vehicle. Find out about magnetic spare car key holders to prevent the hassle at all. Finally, get some practical theft-prevention tips you can use so that you’ll still have a car to lock your keys in.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com I am Jim Kock and today we are talking about auto lockouts. I get calls twenty-four hours a day, day and night; mostly it is when somebody has made the mistake of locking their keys in their car. Sometimes it is due to a mechanical problem with the locks in their car. The cost involved in when you actually call me in and have me come out, it can vary depending on the town you are in, how much competition you have, but it generally ranges between forty dollars and as much as a hundred and twenty-five dollars, it also depends a little bit on the type of car that you have, some cars are tougher, the car with the passenger side airbags or side impact airbags, they tend to be a little tougher and they can require a little different type of tools and methods to unlock them. The most of the time when a call is made to me, it can easily be prevented. If you, there are a few simple things that you can do, you can have a hide-a-key, you can carry a spare key in your wallet, you can even keep a spare key at home, call your wife, have your buddy give you a ride home from the bar wherever you may happen to be, and you can get your key that way. Almost always the calls that I go on can be prevented unless you get something where there is a mechanical problem with the lock or a key is broke off in the lock, that kind of thing, but just take a few preventative measures we will cover in some of the later clips. "