--- title: "LocksmithBro — Locksmith prices and consumer protection" description: "What locksmith work should cost, how to check the person at your door, and what to do if you have already been overcharged." canonical: https://locksmithbro.shop/ note: "Canonical and hreflang point at the HTML. This mirror is for machine readers." --- # What locksmith work should cost, and how to check who is at your door What locksmith work should cost, how to check the person at your door, and what to do if you have already been overcharged. Short answer We are an independent information site. We are not a locksmith, we do not dispatch anyone, and we do not sell leads, which is why we can tell you to hang up. If you are locked out right now, start with the checklist below: six questions, about a minute. ## Before you let anyone start work Six things to settle on the phone or at the door. They take about a minute and they are the difference between a fair bill and a bad one. - Get the total price in writing, including the service call and any after-hours premium. - Ask for the legal business name and the street address, and check the address exists. - Ask whether they are licensed in your state, and get the number if they are. - Ask what vehicle they will arrive in, and whether it is marked. - Confirm they will show identification when they get there. - Confirm in writing that they will not drill anything without your explicit approval and a price. If the price changes when they arrive, you can decline before work begins. You are not obliged to go ahead because someone drove to you. ## Start here [### Scams The whole pattern, end to end, and where it breaks.](https://locksmithbro.shop/scams/)[### Verify What to check, and why "are you licensed?" is often the wrong question.](https://locksmithbro.shop/verify/)[### Costs What drives the price and what a fair quote itemises.](https://locksmithbro.shop/costs/)[### Your rights If you have already been overcharged: document, dispute, file.](https://locksmithbro.shop/rights/) What we do not publish This site publishes nothing about defeating locks — no entry techniques of any kind. If that is what you came for, we cannot help. What we can do is tell you how to get in legitimately, what it should cost, and how to check the person you are about to let near your door. ## How should you use this section? Start with whichever page matches the situation you are actually in, then read the checklist once while nothing is wrong. Almost everything on this site is easier to act on before you need it. The six questions in the Verify checklist take about a minute and are considerably easier to ask from your sofa than from your doorstep at midnight, which is the moment they are designed for. Every page here names its sources and shows when each was retrieved. Where we could not confirm something — a board URL, a price range, a figure attributed to an agency — the page says so rather than guessing, and that gap is itself information about how much of the published material in this trade is worth trusting. ## What will you not find here? Anything about defeating a lock, and any reason for us to send you somewhere. We do not publish entry techniques of any kind. That is a permanent editorial boundary rather than a gap, and it is enforced against every page before it can ship. The reasoning is set out on the [scope boundary](https://locksmithbro.shop/scope-boundary/) page. We are also not a locksmith, we do not dispatch anyone, and we do not sell leads. There is no phone number anywhere on this site, and the build fails if one appears. On a site whose advice is "do not call the first number you see", that seemed like the minimum. ## How do we decide what to publish? Sources are ranked, and the ranking decides what a page is allowed to claim. Tier one is primary: the FTC, state attorneys general, state licensing boards, ADA.gov and the Access Board, NFPA, the eCFR. Tier two is the trade and standards bodies — ALOA, SAVTA, DHI, BHMA, UL, and manufacturer technical documentation. Tier three is cost aggregators and company blogs, and it is only ever used for estimates, always attributed. Locksmith company content is the dominant source of published material in this trade, and a meaningful share of it comes from the operations this site exists to warn people about. All of it is treated as tier three, and none of it is ever the source for a pricing claim, a licensing claim, or a claim about when a lock needs to be destroyed. Pages that touch law or regulation carry a further requirement: a primary government or standards source, and a dated notice saying which one and when. A page that cannot meet that does not ship. ## How current is any of this? Every page carries the date it was last reviewed, and that date is not decorative. It comes from a record of when the page's content actually changed, not from the date of the most recent build. A page that has not been edited keeps its original date rather than quietly resetting to today, because a site that claims everything was reviewed this morning is telling you nothing. The same applies to the sitemap we give search engines. Regulatory pages are the ones that move: a state repeals a licensing act, a board changes its address, an agency publishes an alert. Where we retrieved something on a specific date, the page says so, and where a link could not be confirmed we name the agency instead of publishing an address we have not tested. ## What does a fair locksmith visit actually look like? Worth describing, because most coverage of this trade only describes the bad version and leaves you with no baseline. You call. Someone answers with a business name rather than a generic greeting. They ask what the lock is, where you are, and whether you can prove you belong there — a legitimate technician will ask for identification matching the address before opening anything, and being asked is a good sign rather than an inconvenience. They quote a total, itemised, and will put it in a text message. They give an arrival window and a vehicle. The technician arrives in that vehicle, shows identification without being prompted, and confirms the price before touching the door. If the job turns out to be different from what was described, they stop and tell you what the new price would be before continuing rather than after. The work is non-destructive where that is possible, and where it is not they explain why, get your agreement, and price the replacement before starting. You get an itemised receipt with a business name on it, and you can pay by card. None of that is exotic. It is simply what a functioning trade looks like, and most locksmiths operate this way — which is the thing the scam coverage tends to obscure. Sources - Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection. Consumer Alert: Locked Out? Be Wary of Scammers Posing as Locksmith Technicians2026-07-16 - Federal Trade Commission. FTC Urges Consumers to Use Caution When Seeking a Locksmith2008-05-30 - Builders Hardware Manufacturers Association. ANSI/BHMA Standards — Product Grade Levels2026-08-17 - Nebraska Legislature. Legislative Bill 169 (2021)2021-04-07