You will discover lots of listings in directories, in classified ads and on the internet for emergency locksmiths, a Google search for emergency locksmith in Oakham for example will return numerous results, but is it safe to take this at face value and presume that the locksmith you desire does in fact offer a proper emergency callout service?

First off we want to know what emergency locksmith services involve… Not all services that are provided by a locksmith can be considered an emergency service. A client may simply want an up to date security assessment for their home or their business, occasionally this can be a condition of an insurance company particularly for a business looking to decrease its insurance premium or you may be looking to have your locks replaced after a break in or after losing a set of your keys. Some people simply want extra security adding to their home and outbuildings for piece of mind particularly during holidays. These types of services are referred to in the industry as common locksmith services and not emergency services, so any trustworthy locksmith will do in spite of of whether they promote emergency callout or not.

So what would we consider an emergency in the locksmith industry?

Getting locked out of your house, office, workplace or vehicle is the number one cause of someone calling out an emergency locksmith.  There are other emergency situations too such as broken doors and windows which can be caused by a number of reasons including but not limited too, vandalism, burglary or unintentional breakage during storms, floods or high winds.

Any of the aforesaid situations would need the services of an emergency locksmith but before we go on you need to know that not all locksmiths provide a boarding up service so that is something you should definitely check before calling a locksmith.

In an emergency situation it is very important that you use a local, independent locksmith and here’s why… An independent locksmith marketing services in a certain area is guaranteed to be local because an independent locksmith simply cannot afford to advertise all over the country, its costly, not practical and they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they got a emergency call out request from say 100 miles away as the client wouldn’t be too happy after waiting 3 or 4  hours for the locksmith to arrive which would result in a bad review and everybody knows nowadays that online reviews in particular matter.

Finding a proper local locksmith though can prove move difficult than you think especially with the growing number of nationwide locksmith companies. But let get this straight, these nationwide locksmith companies are not locksmith companies at all they are locksmith call centres where local locksmiths pay a fee to go in their database and then if they get a phone call about a job near you, you’ll get the job. On paper this seems like a great deal to locksmiths as they pay less to join these call centres than they would need to pay to do their own marketing.

Regrettably these call centres are getting more and more bad press. The cost to the end user, the person locked out of their home or vehicle is much more than it would be if they had gone to the locksmith direct as the call centre needs their cut per job too, they’ll usually charge a call out fee too, whereas most independents do not, and if their don’t have a locksmith nearby they will not turn down the job , they’ll send a locksmith from 100’s of miles away and of course the locksmith will need to up his fee quite a bit to make the job worthwhile. There is one such story that was doing the rounds recently where a retail premise in Nottingham unknowingly used a call centre after their alarm would not set due to a faulty door contact. A member of staff waited and waited well into the late evening, ringing back numerous times and being given the run around and when the locksmith finally arrived 4 hours later he admitted he was from Bristol and the bill for fitting a £1.00 magnetic door contact was over £300, the head office was furious to say the least and the store manager ended up in heaps of trouble so be careful and make sure you source a local independent locksmith every time.

Based in Oakham we offer a domestic, commercial and automotive locksmith services throughout the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire where we cover all the major towns and cities including Nottingham, Peterborough, Bourne, Leicester, Kettering, Grantham, Oakham, Stamford as well as small local towns and villages such as Normanton, Sleaford and Greylees