Know Your Locks
Or, Avoiding Being Ripped Off, Part 1
It’s worth making a note of what locks you have. If you have a multi-point lock, it’s also worth ensuring that you are completely familiar with the handle up and handle down behaviour of both the inside and the outside handle.
For example if you know that your latch lock is a reasonably-recent Yale (or ERA or Legge or Union) with no inside keyhole then if you lock yourself out and a so-called locksmith turns up saying, “I know they quoted you £70 but that’s a special lock and we’re going to have to x and then y, and it’s going to cost you £175″, you will be able to put them right or refuse to pay anything and call someone else.
Perhaps you know that you have a multi-point lock and that although the outside handle won’t withdraw the latch, the inside handle will. In that case, if the wind or the dog should slam the door while you’re outside chatting to the postman, and a so-called locksmith turns up saying, “That’ll have to be drilled, and therefore it’s going to cost you …”, you may be in a position to say, “Why?” and “Oh no it shouldn’t.”
So what locks might genuinely provoke a sharp intake of breath and be more costly to lock yourself out with? That would include Ingersolls, Bramahs, Cisa dimple cylinders, most dimple cylinders in fact, most Banhams and Yale or ERA latches with big chunky escutcheons outside and keyholes in their inside handles. (What is a dimple cylinder? Unlike typical cylinder keys where there are valleys and peaks along the edge of the key, these keys have dimples in their faces.)
One more example of a special lock would be a Chubb Ava latch. These are mildly unusual and can be quite expensive to lock yourself out with. The key is very distinctive: it is cylindrical with flats at various angles. And inside there is a roundish plastic knob with a keyhole in its centre.
