A Busy Bee Lock & Key

I called a couple of local locksmiths for quotes and A Busy Bee had the best rate because of his internet special on rekeys. He came out the same day and rekeyed 5 locks and gave me 4 copies of the new key. He was quick and very professional.

Boy, did I get taken for a ride. I'm out over $100 and a lot of time, and have next to nothing to show for it beyond some cheap, ten-year-old hardware and some damage to my front door hardware. Short version A Busy Bee: -- Was wrong about the availability and cost of Schlage parts (thick door kit, Euro profile cylinders), steering me to a different keyway (Kwikset), for which parts were _actually_ unavailable. -- Ordered an incorrect part even after inspecting the locks in person -- Wanted to install the incorrect part anyways (“itwon’t look _that_ bad”) -- Butchered the (expensive brand) strike plate onour front door -- Wouldn’t refund my money, despite not being ableto do the work promised (whole house key) -- Tried hard to convince me to let him installless than all the parts (“how often do you use your front door, anyway?”) -- WAY (3-4x) overcharged for the hardware that Idid purchase through them Long version: I called A Busy Bee to give me a quote to rekey the locks on our recently-purchased home so one key would open every lock. The owner, Clint, came by very shortly after my call, and was quite friendly. After inspecting the locks in our home (front door, 3x back doors, house->garage door, garage->yard door, guest room door), he indicated that we would have to replace some, as there was more than one keyway represented, so a simple re-keying wouldn't be enough to get us onto a single working key for every door. He indicated that we should convert all of the locks to a Kwikset keyway, and not Schlage, because 1) there was no thick-door package for the Schlage keyway that would work for our house->garage door and 2) replacement cylinders for the rear doors (what he called "peanut" cylinders, and are apparently known as Euro profile cylinders) in a Schlage keyway would be prohibitively expensive. Both of these assertions turned out to be incorrect, as I learned later. Before he left, I pointed out that the deadbolt on our front door wouldn't lock (the bolt was slightly too low to fit into the strike plate). He happily “fixed” this problem for free, by aggressively grinding out an additional 1/4" of material from the strike plate with a drill-mounted rasp, removing significantly more material than was necessary from the strike plate, and leaving it quite unattractively butchered. This should have been a red flag, but I let it go based on how friendly and apparently helpful he was. He soon called with a $125 quote for the parts necessary to convert to Kwikset, and billed me up front to order the parts. When they came in a short while later, he made an appointment to come by while I was at work and my wife was home to complete the job. My wife called to indicate that there was a problem - one of the parts he had ordered was the wrong size, but that he wanted to install it anyways. I had her put him on the phone, and instructed him not to install the part. He tried pretty hard to convince me to allow him to do so, indicating that "it won't look _that_ bad." Hearing this, I told him to stop working, install nothing, and locate the correct part before coming back. He eventually called to indicate that he couldn't obtain the correct part (a 1.5" Kwikset mortise cylinder) unless I wanted to pay for 10 of them (north of $200). I declined, and asked him to refund the money for the parts that I had already paid for (but not yet received) based on his promise that he could re-key the whole house to one key, which no longer seemed reasonably possible. He declined to refund my purchase of anything but the incorrect part ($17) and tried very hard to convince me to let him install the rest with the question "how much do you really use your front door, anyway?" I tried, but was eventually unsuccessful, to locate the missing 1.5" mortise cylinder on my own. Having failed, I decided to pick up the remaining hardware and sell it, and pay someone else to re-key the home to Schlage (which turns out to be trivially simple, and not at all as expensive as he indicated – a thick door kit is readily available online for ~$9, and replacement Euro profile cylinders can be found online for ~$30). When I picked up the hardware that my $108 had bought me, I realized how badly I had been taken. I got two deadbolts that retail for ~$15, a $4 thick door kit, and one keyed doorknob (which the box indicates is about ten years old) that, if it were still being manufactured, would retail for about ~$20.

Nice gentleman came out promptly on a late Saturday afternoon. Stuck by their advertised flat rate fee, despite time and difficulty with getting my car door unlocked, rate was considerably cheaper than top rated competitor. Good all around service! I would recommend and use them again.