How much does a locksmith cost to have a door lock repaired?

We get dozens of calls every week from people who’ve got problems with their doors and the one question that they all ask is “How much is it going to cost me?”

And in this blog, we’re going to address that.

I actually find it really frustrating when I can’t give people a precise answer. I can’t tell them it will be X amount of pounds. And the reason for this is that there’s so many different things that could go wrong. For the purposes of this blog, I’m just going to be addressing double glazed doors because the vast majority of doors in this country are double glazed, whether they’re uPVC or composite. And they all have these same kind of locking mechanisms.

There are a number of different things that could go wrong with these type of doors. It could be that the door isn’t locking because it’s not lining up with with the strike plates on the post. Nine times out of 10, that could be just a little bit of adjustment and the problem is solved. It’s a nice quick job, less than half an hour, often less than a quarter of an hour, and the charge is minimal. (We actually reduce our standard charge for jobs under a quarter of an hour.)

Then there are more complicated jobs. Unfortunately, door lock mechanisms are notoriously unreliable. They wear out very quickly, and you’re left in a situation where need to replace the lock immediately. Some of these can be really expensive. Generally, it’s the gearbox (the centre section of the mechanism) that goes wrong, and the price of these gearboxes range from around £50 to, in the worst case, around £300.

People often ask why we need to use such an expensive one, and why can’t a cheaper one be substituted?

With wooden door locks, slight differences in the lock don’t matter. You can just chisel out a little bit more of the door, or you can use a bit of filler to make good, so you can use a different manufacturer’s lock without too much of a problem.

However with double glazed door locks, the way that the mechanisms attach onto the gearbox varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. You can’t use a cheap manufacturer’s where it’s an expensive manufacturer’s lock originally because it physically just won’t attach. The linkages don’t line up. The holes in the post don’t line up. You simply have to use the existing manufacturer’s lock and that means you have to pay their price. Unfortunately, there’s no other way around it.

If a job takes less than half an hour, then it’s the standard charge. If we’re on site for anything up to an hour and a half, then again, we charge the standard follow on rate, but at an hour and a half we cap our charges so we’ll never charge you more than an hour and a half for a double glazed door lock repair.

So at the time of writing, that would be a cap of about £200. And then in the rarest cases, the gearbox might be up to £300, the more average price would be around the £100 mark. Unfortunately, we just can’t be any more accurate than that.

But what we can do, of course, is to come out and take a look and give you a quotation, before you commit.

To get your door lock repaired, call us on 023 9270 6017 or send a message via our contact page – but please remember, if your situation is urgent, then please call us, as it’s the best way to get an immediate response.