Locksmith Prices Norfolk

Transparency of Prices

AC Locksmiths is committed to giving its customers the best service possible at the best possible price, but I am sometimes asked why locking products can be expensive when compared to the shops, and why locksmiths’ prices vary so much. So, in the interest of full transparency, I will do my best to explain and give you, the customer an informed choice as to which locksmith you should use.

In research for this blog, I have been unable to find one single other locksmith brave enough to advertise a labour rate. This is because they change their rates depending on time of day, day of the week, bank holidays, etc. My rate is a flat cost of £50. I do advertise this as an hourly rate, but have never charged beyond the first hour, so whether I am at your house for five minutes or five hours, the cost is the same. £50 may seem like a lot of money if I am only with you for a short time to get you into your home, but when you take into consideration my fuel and car running costs, time to get to and from your property, advertising, web site running, and all the other little costs that are needed to run a small business, I can promise you there is very little actual profit margin. But to charge more would bring me too close to the competition and I want to be able to give my customers value for money.

But what about the locks?  Yes, like all locksmiths I make profit on these, but again not as much as you might think. Sometimes my products are twice as expensive as what you might pay in a DIY store but there are reasons for this. Big name stores have the buying power to buy their items in bulk, gaining them huge discounts. They can also spread their profits across all the items in store, so are even able to price some smaller products very low and counter that with a larger profit on a larger item. I, on the other hand, only have the capacity for smaller amounts of stock, meaning I have to take more time to make orders, pay for more delivery fees and pay more myself as I cannot get the large order discounts. So again, my profit margin is not nearly so great, even though I am charging more than the big name shops. You pay more through me because I have to carry stock that I might not need for six months, but I want to have the right lock on hand when you need it wherever possible. But even if I don’t have what you need on board, that is my problem and unlike some locksmiths, I won’t charge a second time when I return with the correct parts.

I also use the best quality products I can. After all, I give all my customers a guarantee of my work and do not want to be called back against that guarantee. I am also happy for you to source your own locks for me to fit. My running costs come out of my labour, so my customers are more than welcome to provide their own locks for me to fit.

Another query came from an estate agent who asked about a difference in price from a lock I supplied and the one he found on line. The door in question was upvc. Readers of my previous blogs will know I am trying to educate my readers and customers to the fact that most upvc door locks do not meet insurance standards as they are not BS3621 rated. If I replace one of these for a customer, I give them a choice of replacing like for like or upgrading to the insurance standard. But if I come across a kite marked cylinder, I must replace it with another kite marked cylinder because no locksmith worth having would downgrade any customer’s security. So when I replaced a like for like BS3621 rated cylinder, the estate agent looking after the property questioned the cost as he had found a cylinder on line for a fraction of the cost. Needless to say I looked up the lock the estate agent found and discovered it to be a brand I had never heard of and only of standard non-insurance rating, therefore the comparison was a waste of time. When you use a tradesman, part of the cost goes into the expertise of knowledge. I know that my insurance rated cylinders for upvc doors are better than the ones you can buy in the DIY superstore and yes, they are more expensive. But I know they will also do a better job of deterring  break ins.

Before I sign off this blog, I want to give one final example of how pricing can vary; I found a product very similar to one of my locks in a well known DIY store recently and it was nearly half the price I charge. This made me question the price I had set. A day later, I happened to be in another well known (but not as popular) DIY store where I found the same product was over £10.00 more than the first DIY store. That’s more than £10 difference between two big name companies. Now either one is simply overcharging, or the other is off setting losses against other profits because the lock was branded the same and would have come from the same supplier. Less than a week later, I happened to be in a more localised DIY and hardware shop where the same product was a lot closer in price to my own. This last shop was still very big and had a huge range of products to offset profits with, and even though still less than my own price, their profit margin was obviously much more.

And so I hope this explains why sometimes, the products I have on board may be more expensive than similar ones you can buy in the shops. The prices I set are as fair as I can possibly make them and I am not scared to advertise my prices as I believe an honest pricing system backed up by a friendly, efficient service will, and does, bring in recommendations, repeat custom and happy customers.

Thanks for reading.