Two different worries bring people to this page. One is that you cannot say who still holds a key. The other is that the lock on the door was never much of a lock. Re-pinning settles the first completely and the second not at all, so we tell you which one you are buying before anything comes off the door.
Re-pinning what is already bolted to the door, or taking it off and fitting something better. Both travel on the same van, to any address inside the city limits.
Every rekey answers one of two worries, and it is worth knowing which one you have before you ring. The first is that the keys cannot be accounted for: a rented suite in the No. 3 Road tower belt whose key list nobody ever wrote down, a house handed across with three keys and a vague story about a fourth, a townhome bought from somebody who bought it from the builder. The second worry is different. It is that the lock itself is not much of a lock. Re-pinning closes the first question entirely and the second one not at all, and that difference is most of the distance between the first row of the table below and the third.
Re-pinning means changing the small stack of pins inside the cylinder already bolted to your door. Nothing is bought, nothing is drilled, the outside of the door is exactly as it was, and the keys that were in circulation when the technician arrived open nothing by the time the van leaves. A lock change is the other job. The set comes off and a different one goes on, which costs more because there is hardware inside the figure, and it is worth that difference only when the hardware is the thing you actually wanted to change.
Two things move a job around this table and the address is neither of them. The first is the number of cylinders, since the per-lock figure falls once a technician is at the property with the machine out. The second is whether you are buying hardware or only buying key control. Four cylinders re-pinned and four deadbolts replaced are the same visit and roughly four times apart in price, which is why the two halves of this job are worth separating on the phone.
| Service | Typical range (per cylinder) |
|---|---|
| Rekey, one residential deadbolt or knob set | $35 – $65 |
| Rekey, multiple locks keyed alike on one visit | $25 – $50 each (bulk) |
| Lock change, grade 2 residential deadbolt (supply & install) | $120 – $200 |
| Lock change, grade 1 or high-security (supply & install) | $180 – $320 |
| Commercial deadbolt change, standard grade (supply & install) | $80 – $160 per cylinder |
| Service call / dispatch fee | $49 – $75 (credited toward work) |
The last row is not a surcharge for where you live. It is charged when a van is dispatched, credited in full against the finished job so it comes off the total rather than arriving on top of it, and it is only kept if a booked visit is cancelled after a technician has already set out. The bulk row above it is not a discount scheme either. It is what the second and third cylinder genuinely cost once somebody is already standing at the property with the pinning kit open, which is why several locks are quoted as one job and a range is given on the phone before anyone is sent, with the after-hours rate already inside that figure once the business day is over.
Say which of the two the call is about. If it is the key list, a re-pin closes it and the price comes off the first two rows. If it is the lock, we are buying hardware and the quote comes off the third or fourth. Plenty of jobs turn out to be both, with the front door replaced and everything behind it pinned onto the new key, and that is an ordinary ticket rather than an upsell.
The hardware gets read on arrival. That decides whether the visit is a pinning kit or a replacement deadbolt out of the van, and both travel on every call, so neither answer turns into a second appointment. If you can photograph the face of the lock and the head of the key when you book, that conversation is mostly over before anyone sets off.
New hardware goes in against the prep already cut in the door. Keys are cut at the address, and each one is turned in the cylinder it belongs to before the van packs up. Ask for as many copies as you want while the machine is out, because that is the cheapest they will ever be.
This is the part that gets skipped on the phone. Re-pinning changes who can open a lock and nothing else about it. A builder-grade keyed knob that has been re-pinned is still a builder-grade keyed knob, correctly keyed to you and no harder to defeat than it was yesterday. That matters most on the doors in Richmond that were never given a deadbolt at all, which is a feature of the older rental stock rather than of the tower belt: a suite whose only lock is the knob in the handle. Re-pinning it answers the key question honestly and leaves the door exactly as strong as it was. Adding a deadbolt is a separate job, and where you are renting it is a conversation with whoever owns the door before it is a booking.
When the lock itself is the point, the table splits by grade. A grade 2 residential deadbolt is the ordinary answer and is close to what most of the newer stock in Richmond already carries, since Schlage B-series and Weiser deadbolts are what went onto the suite doors and townhomes built here over the last twenty-odd years. Replacing like with like is quick and cheap in labour because the prep in the door is already right. Grade 1 and high-security hardware is the heavier tier, the sort of thing specified on a commercial entry rather than bought by default for a house, and it is where names such as Medeco and Mul-T-Lock sit. It costs more to buy and no more to fit. The advice we give most often is unglamorous: a house is better served by putting every exterior door on one decent grade 2 deadbolt than by buying one expensive lock for the front and leaving a knob lock on the side.
Ownership decides more of this job than the hardware does, and on a suite or a strata townhome the question is not always yours alone to answer. Re-pinning touches only the pins inside a cylinder you are already entitled to use. It leaves the door, the trim and everything the building paid for exactly as they were, which is why it is the least contentious version of this work in a strata. Changing the hardware is a different conversation, because the thing being taken off the door may not be yours to take off. In the tower belt that means the council, and in a rented suite it means the owner. Either answer is much better to have before the visit is booked than while a technician is waiting in a corridor.
Where the caller is a manager rather than a resident, the number worth saying on the phone is how many suites are involved. Several cylinders on one attendance come off the bulk row rather than the single-cylinder row, and on a building with a run of tenancies ending that is a real saving rather than a rounding one. Anything to do with the building’s own entry system, as opposed to the locks with keyways in them, is not a rekey at all, and it stays where it was set up.
East Cambie is the clearest reminder that this is an address question rather than a neighbourhood one. The same corner of the city holds strata townhome complexes from the 1990s and 2000s alongside older single-family lots on streets such as Odlin Road and Pearson Avenue, so two callers a few blocks apart can ask for identical work and get different answers about who signs it off. One has a council in the conversation. The other has nobody to ask but themselves.
A new deadbolt has to fit a hole somebody else drilled. On most Richmond doors that is not a problem, because the prep is standard and a current deadbolt drops straight into it, which is exactly why a like-for-like change is a short visit. It needs thinking about at the two ends of the city’s housing. In the post-2010 buildings along Capstan Way and Hollybridge Way, and in the townhome belt between Garden City Road and No. 3 Road, an entire complex was fitted in a single pass by one developer, so a replacement chosen to match what the rest of the complex carries keeps the door consistent with its neighbours and keeps the council comfortable with it.
At the other end of the range are the oldest doors in Richmond, which were never bored for a cylindrical deadbolt in the first place. Fitting one to a door like that means cutting into the slab, so the cheaper and far less destructive route is to replace what is already in it rather than the whole lockset. Say what is sitting in the door at the booking, and the part that fits it travels out on the first visit.
Appearance belongs in the specification rather than at the end of it. A replacement that sits on a different footprint leaves the outline of the old one in the paint or the finish, and on a strata door that is the version somebody notices from the corridor.
There are two commercial jobs here and only one of them is on the table above. Buying hardware, a standard grade commercial deadbolt supplied and fitted, is the row priced per cylinder. Re-pinning a cylinder that is staying in the door is the cheaper half of the work and is priced on the commercial locksmith page rather than from this table, which is the page to read before a lease changeover, because that is the job most often done twice: once when an outgoing tenant hands the keys back and once when the next business opens the same door. Standard commercial cylinders are re-pinned on the spot, and the per-lock figure drops as more of them are done on one attendance, so a small unit with a front entry, a back door and an office is one booking rather than three. The larger side of this work, master hierarchies, restricted keyways and the hardware quirks of the No. 3 Road retail corridor, is set out on the same page.
Anywhere inside the city limits, at the rates published above.
For a key locked in a car, a door that has dropped out of square, or a master key chart across a whole building.