Two things decide a Richmond booking, and the hour you click is neither of them. The first is which area the address sits in, because this calendar reaches from Bridgeport at the top of No. 3 Road down to Ironwood at the far south end of No. 5 Road, and those are not the same drive. The second is what is actually fitted to the door, because a Steveston mortise case and a Kwikset SmartKey cylinder want different things aboard the van. Put both in the form and the slot you picked is the slot you get. If a door is already shut against you, stop reading and call 604-332-2291.
Richmond sits on a river delta. It is flat, grid planned and boxed in by the north and south arms of the Fraser, with no mountain switchbacks and no ferry sailing to wait on, which is why a window booked here tends to hold. What moves it is a short list of intersections that back up, and they do not all back up at the same hour. An East Cambie warehouse address comes in through Bridgeport and Cambie, at its worst inside the morning industrial traffic window. A Terra Nova address routed along Williams Road meets the school zone at the west end of that road in the morning instead. Thompson arrives on Blundell, where it is the No. 3 Road intersection at peak that costs you. Ironwood sits behind the Steveston Highway merge at No. 5 Road. Name the area when you book and you get steered to the hour that is clear for it.
A civic number is enough almost everywhere in Richmond. Two kinds of address are not, and they fail in opposite directions. A parkade bay has a perfectly good address and still cannot be found. A farm lane off Steveston Highway or No. 4 Road in Gilmore has an address that takes a moment to place, so the nearest intersection, or anything visible from the road, does more work than the number does.
Dispatch places the address in its area first, then sets the window around the intersection that serves it rather than around a citywide average.
Schlage B-series, Weiser and Kwikset SmartKey ride along as a matter of course. Anything older or stranger than that is the reason to describe the door in the notes.
A text comes back settling the window. A second call comes from the van before it turns onto your street.
Nothing is taken up front to hold a slot, and payment is by card, cash or e-transfer once the work is finished. If the day stops working for you, phone and move it. Rescheduling costs nothing with 4 hours notice.
Many of Richmond's car lockouts happen indoors, and each of the big structures wants a different sentence from you. At Aberdeen Centre, give the parkade level, the closest elevator core or stairwell, the colour and make of the car, and any number or letter on the nearest pillar or wall sign. That parkade is large and its numbering can be confusing, so the pillar marking is worth walking a few metres to read.
At Richmond Centre the useful extra is which mall entrance you came in from, along with the level and whatever signage sits nearest the vehicle. The YVR structures behave better than either: level, the zone letter on the nearest pillar, make and colour, and that is the whole of it, because the numbering there is consistent. If the signal on a lower level will not hold, walk toward an exit ramp to call or text, and the technician pins the exact bay once they are inside the structure.
Residential parkades are a different problem again. Most of the newer West Cambie buildings run visitor access through the lobby, so the building address and the parkade level are what dispatch needs, and getting in is arranged with you rather than around you.
Your own suite door is yours to book, and your name on the booking is the whole of the permission required. Past that the answer forks, and in Richmond it forks by building type rather than by neighbourhood.
In the tower stock along Alderbridge Way, Cook Road and Hollybridge Way, common area access runs on a building fob while the suite carries its own deadbolt. Everything from the suite door inward can be booked here. A fob belongs to the property manager's system rather than to a cylinder, so a lost one is their question first.
The townhome stratas in Steveston and Hamilton do it the other way around. The shared entry there is a keyed gate, and that gate cylinder is the strata's. It is worth raising when you book, because a suite deadbolt can sometimes be rekeyed to run on the same key as the gate where the keyways are compatible. Ask for both on the form and it gets checked before the van is loaded.
Putting a keypad deadbolt on a strata door is a question for your council before it is a question for us. The models that usually pass are battery powered and drop into the existing prep. Where the exterior lock cannot be changed at all, the two substitutes worth booking are a higher security pin stack inside the hardware already on the door, or a grade 1 deadbolt cut to the same prep.
Three requests arrive here often and none of them is settled by picking a slot. Guest room key cards in the Bridgeport hotels run on the property's own system, managed by its own maintenance team, so those go back to the hotel. Every conventionally keyed lock in the same building is ours: service corridors, maintenance and storage rooms, offices, staff areas and the exterior entries.
A motorized garage door with the remote shut inside it is a garage door service call, which is a different trade. The keyed pedestrian cylinder on that same garage, and the door between the garage and the house, are locksmith work and belong in this calendar.
A rekey inside an existing master hierarchy, which is the standing request from the office and light industrial buildings on Bridgeport Road and River Road, needs two things before a date is held. Dispatch has to be able to verify that you are an authorized party for the property, and the master key has to be at the appointment so the system can be checked against it.
Two lines in the service list point at vehicles and they book differently. Automotive Locksmith is the one to choose when the key still exists and the car is shut around it. Car Key Replacement is the one when the key is gone, and that request is held rather than confirmed until dispatch knows the vehicle, because a plain cut blade, a chip key and a proximity key are three different lengths of visit.
Sea Island adds a booking that runs on somebody else's clock. If you are flying back to a car at YVR and you already know the key is not with you, book against the flight rather than the hour: give the arrival time plus a buffer for customs and baggage, and the visit gets written around that. It works out better than dialling from the arrivals hall.
The calendar is for work that has a date on it. A lockout does not have one, so the phone is the faster route. Call 604-332-2291 and the van is dispatched off that call.
The shapes these calls take here are familiar enough to plan around. A tower suite in City Centre or Brighouse where the fob got you into the lobby and the deadbolt stopped you at your own door. A car sitting in a mall parkade after a long afternoon. A delivery van shut with the engine running on Viking Way. A summer evening at the Steveston waterfront, when the Cannery and Community Centre lots empty out into a row of locked cars.
Every area below has a page of its own, covering the housing era, the hardware those doors tend to carry, and the way a van reaches them.