Gateshead Locksmith Service

Pricing Policy

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Call Out Charges – what are they and when are they applied and who applies them?

 

We are 24 Hour Locksmiths, this means we respond to calls any time of day or night.

 

It is a practice within the locksmith industry that a request for a locksmith's attendance at short notice, i.e; an emergency, such as a person being locked out of their home will incur an emergency call out charge (call out charge).

 

This call out charge is in addition to the customer being charged the locksmith's normal hourly rate or fixed cost for the job. A call out charge is made irrespective of the time of day or night along with the locksmith's hourly rate or fixed cost. A call out charge isn't normally applied where work is pre-booked and is not urgent or an emergency and this is why we advertise no call out charge for pre booked work or work carried out during 9am till 5pm Monday to Friday which is classed as a standard working week..

 

Some Locksmith Companies decide not to invoke this charge. An Emergency Call Out Charge ("Call Out Charge or Call Out Fee") But use double time per hour which actually works out more. Some will use double rates plus a call out fee! 

 

When a Company declares that they do not apply a call out charge ("No Call Out Charge"), it doesn't mean that a locksmith will attend an incident for free. It means that they will still apply their normal hourly rate/fixed cost, but will not apply an additional call out charge for attending at short notice. ie. in an emergency. If we feel the need to add a call out charge then we will add one if it's required. However if we are quoting on a job, then this is always free of charge, we DO NOT charge a call out fee or hourly rate for quotes. That's why we class them and advertised them as "FREE No Obligation Quotes". As they are free of charge.

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We do not use call out fees during the hours of 9am till 5pm Monday to Friday, however we may use them in some circumstances. You will be made fully aware of this before we attend.

 

Hourly Rates and fixed costs

There are several factors which dictate our hourly rate/fixed cost such as;

 

A) The time of day or night or weekend

B) The geographical location (postcode)

C) The type of job we are required to undertake

D) Local Charges/Tolls, Fuel Fee, Postage Fee

E) Weather issues, Danger issues.

 

It is impossible to show on this website every conceivable charging possibility. However based on the factors (A) to (E) above here are some examples of pricing.

 

A ) The time of day or night - Our standard labour charge for attending an address for general locksmith work between 9am and 5pm is from £45 to £55. This hourly rate would rise to a maximum of £110 per hour between the hours of 12 midnight and 6am. 

 

A) Our hourly standard labour charges apply during normal working hours, 9am – 5pm Monday – Friday. From £45 to £55 per hour. However most jobs are done within 1 hour or less. 

 

A) Weekend Call Out Charges - Starting from 5pm on a Friday till 9am on Monday the call out fees are 5pm till 8pm is £25 and then from 8pm till 12 midnight is £50 and from 12 midnight till 6am is £100 and from 6am till 9am is £25. If we invoke a call out fee we will not charge time and half or double rate labour fees. It will be standard labor charge depending on the job.

 

Friday from 5pm till Monday at 9am is a labour fee of £55 per hour. This hourly rate will rise to a maximum of £110 per hour or we will apply an off call out fee to try and keep the pricing lower.

 

B) The geographical location – (B) If we received the same type of call as in (A) above but to an address in the outer country area as opposed to inner city / town areas then we will add a call out fee to cover any fuel costs, time driving to and from etc. 

 

C) The type of job we are required to undertake – (c) Locksmith work covers a multitude of variables from opening a simple cam lock on a cupboard through to opening and fitting mortise (Mortice) locks through to forced entry which can take a physical toll on the locksmiths body, health and can cause injury to the locksmith. If we go above and beyond to help you then we do expect to be paid for the time given. If a lock opens in seconds. It's not due to the lock, it's due to the many years of skills and learning, investment in training and we expect to be paid for such skills and time. If we open your door in seconds and you refuse to pay the full fee then we will lock your property back up, leaving you locked out and we will flag you on all locksmith databases as a non paying client which will blacklist you and only leave your options open to using extremely expensive locksmiths who charge 4 to 6 times what we charge. For example if we open the euro lock the price is £45. A PPC locksmith found at the top of Google will charge £350 - £600 for the same job. 

 

D) Local Charges/Tolls, Fuel Fee, Postage Fee - These are charges made by local government or private companies to access certain geographical areas, cross certain bridges or use certain tunnels. This may incur a local charge or toll. For example if we had to use the Tyne Tunnel then we will charge for that toll. We can charge a fuel fee if we have to find parts such as an odd sized lock or out of stock components and we have to drive to a city to find the part or collect it. We will charge for postage, packaging and any other charges such as import charges if you have a European or American system fitted and we need to import parts then you will cover the costs of such parts and time taken to deal with such things.

 

E) Weather issues, Danger issues -  forced entry and Bad weather issues have a "danger" or "forced entry" charge, such as when the air temp is below - 1c, snow, storms, ice, danger to life weather warnings, amber alerts, orange and red weather alerts  then we have a danger fee of £50 to a maximum of £500. If we are in any danger at all due to an issue through evictions then we will charge a danger fee of up to £500 or charge up to £1000 if we suffer any injury due to being attacked, hurt or hospitalised. 

 

1. We never attend any job without giving our hourly labour rate or fixed cost. This has to be agreed by the customer prior to us attending the job, we will then re-quote if the job is not as expected or as advised to us.

 

2. Where we think new parts will be required, if possible we will give a range of what we believe the cost of the new part will be eg £15 to £28 for a standard rim cylinder. If we feel that we cannot confidently quote for parts based on the information supplied by the customer we will quote our hourly rate/fixed cost and inform the customer that there may be parts required, which will be quoted on site.

 

3. All hourly rates/fixed costs; parts and additional toll charges will be subject to VAT at the current rate if we charge VAT. We will always advise if we are charging a VAT charge..

 

4. Where an hourly rate is charged we will always quote a minimum charge of one hour. This is regardless of the time spent at the address up to one hour e.g. 1 to 59 minutes.

 

5. If the first hour is exceeded, we charge thereafter in 15 minute intervals. In the example given in i) above we quoted an hourly rate of £45 and were on site for 1 hour 10 minutes we would charge the first hour at £45 and the 10 minutes would be rounded up to 15 minutes for charging purposes. Therefore the cost would be £55.75.

 

6. Our hourly rate starts from the time we arrive at site (agreed address) If for whatever reason the person we are meeting ie. The householder, landlord, tenant, bailiff is late, the waiting time incurred by our locksmith will be charged for in accordance with the hourly rate quoted. It's also the same if you book us in for any work and have us on standby. We are delaying full paying clients and due to this our full hourly rate will be advised. 

 

7. When we receive instructions to attend an address, we will always call or text, email the customer back to confirm the ETA and give the customer the name of the locksmith attending or we will send a confirmation text of the locksmith's name and attending time frame.

 

7.1. If the customer wishes to cancel our attendance they may do so without charge as long as we receive notification by telephone no less than one hour before our agreed ETA. If cancellation is made less than one hour, we will charge the equivalent of 'one hours labour' as a cancellation charge. Failure to attend the agreed date and time will result in an additional charge of £20 for the first non show and followed by a charge of £45 for every other missed appointment.  

 

8. Priced Per Job, this is where we can give you a price on the information we receive from yourself, if we believe we can fix the job that you have described to us via communication then we may give a price per job, if this fails to be the case then we will notify you or the attendee of the price change, such as if we quote £75 for labour of the job but then job ended up taking 4 hours as we were given misleading information such as my lock is broke and has been for several years, or that the door had totally dropped, jammed in it's frame and had been catching for a long time where you have had to force the handles up and door to lock the door, or you had a locksmith out recently who used a lock puller or snap bar to open the door and now the door has failed due to this type of entry and you fail mention these facts when asked then you have given us misleading information for a cheaper price then we will go back to standard rate per hour charged in 15 minute intervals after the first hour. If you cancel the job due to this then we can still charge a fee for attending, this can be our hourly rate plus a call out fee and for any materials used up to that point or any fuel fees, missed jobs etc. 

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Please full read the above pricing policy and our terms and conditions in full before booking as by booking in a appointment you full agree to them all. 

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