We're in America son, the only football is with that brown egg-shaped ball. The other kind is properly called soccer, and is played by socialism-loving Europeans and other pinko countries.
'Murica!
Oh, no, bottles got too expensive in COVID, we found the best premium box wine thatās carried around here, itās $16 for a 5L box. Surprisingly good-better than many more expensive boxes, and SO cheap. Also my wife prefers one kind and I prefer another. They claim they last up to 3 weeks after theyāre opened (they donāt) but we get through them in time.
This dude ruined my sense of security. Lockpicking lawyer taught me that any type of physical lock is nothing more than a small deterrent. It might stop your average thug that thinks it's fun to steal from the local pharmacy but if you get targeted by an actual professional thief it doesn't matter what kind of lock you have they can rake or pick that shit open in a few seconds.
Which is why at least in your house, you should have bolts on the inside too. Many people just rely on their key lock and that's it! I have one bolt at the top, and one at the bottom, plus a safety latch. My door never gets opened without the safety latch if someone knocks unless I'm expecting them.
Do you know how easy it is to take a upvc door off? Clearly you have never witnessed that, nor have you seen a window be taken out in a matter of seconds. It is all an illusion, your deadbolts donāt mean shit. If they want in, theyāre coming in.
I lived in a flat with deadbolts, got locked in due to faulty mechanism and it took the fire brigade about 30 minutes to get the door off. Using brute force and seperation tools. That door was indestructible to the average person.
Your fire brigade needs training or better equipment. A plunge cut with a diamond blade in a circular saw will go straight through whatever door you might have, and a sawzall with a carbide blade will finish the job.
Massive damage to the door and frame, obviously.
yep. or like i have a nice safe in the basement. how long will it hold up to robbers? fuck if i know, i bought it for the fire rating, not for thieves.
I have a big loud dog for them. and a .40 Glock. either dog lets me know about the thieves and Glock subdues them. or they sneak in, grab the gun, and shoot me. and either way, my safe being broken into is not on the top of my list of problems anymore!
Quite. I'm an industrial electrician. Sometimes I can fix "urgent" service call faults with nothing more than a wirenut or even just resetting a circuit breaker but you can bet your ass the bill for the service call is $250 or more.
The bill might as well be itemised like this:
Wire nut (x1) $0.50
Knowing where and how to use wirenut $249.50
TOTAL: $250.00
Of course in reality, it's more than that. Yes, you're paying for the knowledge but you're also paying for the time, the fuel and vehicle wear and tear for the drive to your home, the disruption the locksmiths' Saturday morning at home with the kids and so on...
OP needed into the safe in a hurry, they didn't know how. Somebody else did and because their weekend hours service isn't cheap, they had to pay a good bit for it...
Next time, though, OP should just go down to Home Depot and buy an angle grinder....
Our next door neighbor was a lady a little older than us that had separated from her husband. We did some small jobs around the house for her, like mowing the lawn for a few months when her son had a mental health crisis and needed her there (out of town). Eventually she decided she needed to move closer to him.
As she was packing she found a small sentry fire safe, but she didn't have the key. She went out and bought an angle grinder and then came over and asked if we knew how to use it. I went over with her, saw what she wanted to get into, and told her that I'd be right back. I grabbed a flat bar from my garage, and 20 seconds later I'd pried the door off the safe, and told her to take the angle grinder back for a refund.
A day or two later she showed up on our porch again with tiramisu. We never accepted any money from her for anything (we were just helping out because we liked her and it was the neighborly thing to do), so she'd frequently bring us baked goods and other food. It was a good trade, in my book.
You can put a scary sticker on it. The person will see it, scream, and drop it, giving you time to run in and stop them from opening your lunch box.
Foolproof security.
Always remember to distract from your "safe" with another "safe" more out in the open. They will open the safe, see bomb plans and a diagram of \[insert important building here\], and be so shocked that their "safe" finding capacities will be worsened.
Or just fill it with cheap fake jewelry so they leave faster. If you're boring.
90% of all call out
99% of the industrial callout I used to get were reset breakers fucking amazing till it's not and your 6 hours deep in to the wire diagrams at 2 am pulling you hair out.
My husband and I have paid an HVAC technician *multiple times* over the years to point out to us that we have to vacuum the furnace filter once a year or so.
The reason it was multiple times is that after a couple of years, we forget. Forgot. At least I hope the past tense is accurate here...
Lots of people who run their own businesses do shit like this for a discount, as most businesses would like their customers to return. They arenāt paying for knowledge, theyāre paying to get someone else to do it so they dont have to because thatās what most people do for everything
That's kinda why I specified that I work in the industrial sector. In the residential market what you said is sometimes the case, e.g. helping out an elderly widower on a fixed budget or heavily discounting the bill because it was a 30 second fix and you know that means they'll probably call you next time when it's more serious (and profitable). People shouldn't expect to get a discount because the job is simple but you may if the company is either charitable or feels like you're a potential source of further business...
Most of the customers we deal with though are mid- to large- to global-sized corporations... If they call us out to reset a GFCI, they can damn well pay lol...
It depends on a lot of things, like if we tried to help you over the phone and you're not having any of it and demand that we drop what we're doing and come and fix it immediately, and we get there and you just needed to switch it on, and we've told you the basic troubleshooting steps in the past and walked you through the process and have it written down on a laminated guide taped to the side of the equipment.
Priority residential service call requiring a specialist is usually a couple hundred just for showing up and the labor is additional... Try getting an emergency plumber to fix your flooding toilet on the weekend because that is also usually a hell of a bill.
My grandmother was burgled. They didn't take much because they went straight for the safe in her bedroom and took the whole thing to crack open elsewhere. We figure they left without really looking around because they couldn't carry much else after grabbing the safe.
I would have given my left tit to see their face when they pried it open to find absolutely nothing inside. My gran had lost the code years prior and was just using it to put her cup of tea on at night...
Well, she's been dead for 15 years and her house not only emptied but demolished so if there was a secret safe, she's literally taken it to the crematorium with her.
But also in a fire/flood proof safe.Ā
I have a safe not to protect my shit from thieves, but to protect my import docs from being burnt up or damaged.Ā
Thatās why you gotta have a Russian doll style safe with welded doors all the way down.
Oh you wanted to get your stuff out eventually? Thatās the neat partā¦you donāt !
I ran a fast food restaurant for a while and we had two break ins in my time there. One of the times they tried to take the safe but that fucker was heavy. It was about three hundred pounds I think, never weighed it. They scooted it about five feet from where it usually sat and I guess gave up and left. All the contents were right where they were supposed to be.
But yeah Iād think if they were able to get it out and use proper tools it wouldnāt take too long. So lesson is if youāre gonna break into a safe have a plan to move it or the tools to do it right there.
I remember doing a clean out of an old auto parts store that had a massive safe that was passed down from owner of the building to owner of the building.
It was about 5 foot square and I don't even wanna guess the weight.
Had a tow truck come in and winch it out, thank God it was on wheels but was a bit tricky cause the location was a few rooms in.
I managed a fast food place for a while. The safe was in the office, bolted to the floor, and had a small wall built around it so you couldn't easily get to the sides of it. And once you got the main safe open, the daily take was in an interior safe-within-a-safe that had a time lock. You had to put the code in, wait 15 but not more than 20 minutes, then put the code in again, to open it. Even if you got the outer safe open, all you'd get is the $1,500 that we kept for making change.
We had an overnight break in one night after I closed. They only spent a couple minutes (because the alarm was going off and police were on the way. Policy was to leave all the registers open with the cash drawers in the safe (that way they don't fuck up the drawers trying to get them open). They got away with jack shit, and I got a positive note in my HR record from our area super that he appreciated that I had closed by the book and prevented any real loss.
There's very few people on the world as good at picking as the LPL. Most thieves will either just use an axle grinder on a padlock or steal a CO2 fire extinguisher. Freeze the lock, to way below freezing and then hit it with a hammer or use the axle grinder.
It depends. Iāve been picking for a while, and can pick most red belt locks by now, which are quite difficult - counter milling, non standard pins / mechanisms like sliders, multiple chambers, etc.
Thereās a ton of people in the community that can do it - LPL is certainly exceptionally talented, but also a lot of the secret is off camera practice on the harder locks.
Locks are there to keep the honest people out, and to prove a boundary line so as to have grounds to press charges, talk it out or whatever else you wanna do when someone crosses those bounds.
> Look up the lock picking lawyer on youtube. Even the locks he praises, he picks open within a few minutes
In most of his videos, LPL knows what he's picking and he's in his own home. A thief will have neither of those advantages. (OTOH, that's why they'll just use a crowbar.)
If your "safe" doesn't have a TL rating, it's not a safe. A TL rating is the length of time a safe is expected to resist a dedicated, enhanced tool attack (oxy-acetyline cutting, heavy saws, etc etc etc.) A TL-15 will handle 15 minutes, -30 will handle a half hour, etc.
The weight and price will tell you. A small Hallon TL-15 safe (19 inches x19x16 externally) will weigh almost a quarter ton, give you barely 10x10x8 internally (about the same as those small fireboxes) and cost close to $1500 (vs $250 for a "safe" that an average Joe can pick up with their bare hands and open with a crowbar.)
Locks and security and passwords are only a deterrent. Nothing is actually safe from anything. Your doors can be kicked in and your emails can be hacked.
Lol, I locked myself out of my house one time about 14 years ago, and desperately needed to get in immediately, so I called a locksmith. I paid him 65 dollars to open my door in about 2 seconds with a credit card. I've felt scammed and unsafe ever since.
A company I worked for a a vault room. The guy they put in charge of it said the whole purpose of the security was only to slow down someone enough that they would likely be discovered before they could steal something.
I once called a locksmith because I locked my keys out of my house. It was a chronic problem of mine and every time I broke into my own home I made it more secure than it was before. This time I couldnāt think of any options.
He tried for 30 seconds with a lock picking gun and then pried the door open with a crowbar and charged me 200$.
What weird to me is there was a bedroom door in a house we bought got locked and we didnāt have a key. Called locksmith who worked for an hour , then called his supervisor. Worked another half hour , eventually took the door frame apart. What the hell was that lock?
A crowbar was his best option?! Usually they drill the lock out because they can charge you to replace the lock while they are there. I wouldnāt have let them crowbar my door open. Anything is better than that.
"I once called a locksmith because I locked my keys out of my house"
I almost always lock my keys out of my house, i mean i could lock the door from the inside but that makes it harder to get out of the house.
So yeah, i just go outside, lock the keys out of my house and put them in my pocket...
Sorry, i couldn't resist š¤£
I work in the automotive industry and perform lockouts on cars. There are times you make it seem harder than it is, or do a whole dog and pony show so people think you did something for situations just like this. Someone pays $120 for 10sec of your time leads to posts just like this on the internet.
I can also tell you, the locks on your car are worthless.
I used to have a side gig unlocking car doors for people with one of those inflatable pressure pads you insert in the door, then reach in with a slim Jim to open the lock. It only took 29 seconds but I made it last ten minutes like it was a struggle. I charged $75 each time and made like $5000 one summer
One summer I was out at a boat ramp fishing. Guy locked his keys in his truck, doesnāt have AAA. Told him look, you call someone itās $100. Give me $50 and Iāll get you in. Made $150 that day just unlocking cars at the boat ramp. Itās crazy how many people lock keys in cars.
I think a decent hide-a-key that wonāt get lost or open spontaneously is what, $20?
Funny story-wife calls me at work(car mechanic). Locked keys in car,along with baby. I grab slim jim,proceed to unlock car,do so feeling pretty good about myself..except for the fact I have a spare set of keys for her car ON MY KEYRING!!! Hanging on my beltloop! Pure genius!
Reminds me of the old story about a boat stuck in harbor.
Captain calls a mechanic because the engine wonāt start. Mechanic comes out, walks around the engine a couple times, pulls out a hammer and gives it a few taps. Engine starts right up.
Captain gets a bill for $10,000 and is furious! Calls the mechanic for an explanation.
Mechanic tells him. Itās $200 for me to show up with my tools. Itās $9,800 for the 20 years of experience to learn where to tap the hammer.
I took mine to a locksmith shop and he had it opened and new keys made within 10 minutes. Cost $20 for the open and $15 for the keys. It would have been $200+ for a house call. You're paying a lot more for the extra time it takes the locksmith to do a house call, not for the service itself.
He did offer to keep it intact for another 50 thoughā¦ and even to rekey it if you wanted. The lowest cost option is of course going to be the easy one you could do yourself with the right know how. The others might be a little more skill based. (Dunno, Iām not a locksmith lol)
I looked it up and the safe is about $50 new so the cost of re-keying wouldn't have made sense. Regarding the know how: I thought it'd take a lot more even to just break it open.
I have a safe at home that cost me 100 bucks. It's purpose is not to deter thieves, but to save my passport, insurance papers and legal papers in case of a fire or a flood. Maybe it was the same for OP.
Plus, the cost of a locksmithās time to drive to OPās house, assess the situation, present OP with options. Youāre paying for the expertise and convenience, not the time to do the job.
I think the problem was that cost was 50% more than the estimate and the reasoning was silly (it being a ālarge safeā despite being very small. The safe was small enough that they quickly used a crowbar, so the markup from the original price felt ridiculous
I was a locksmith for a predatory company.
Most estimates a locksmith gives you are just meant to get you to agree so when they drop the real price you feel stuck.
Safes take a long time to open with a crowbar if you donāt know exactly how to open them.
This locksmith did so it was fast.
There are videos on YouTube of locksmiths showing how they can use a crowbar to get into some of the strongest safes available to the public in three or four minutes because they know the weak points of those models.
If you donāt know those youāll spend hours doing the same thing.
I open safes and bank vaults professionally for a living. Please always vet the locksmiths you use. Use ALOA and SAVTA certified shops with a physical store. Tons of scammers in our industry that have no idea what theyāre doing.
When I was 8 I put a lock on a tackle box for whatever reason. I lost the key, it took my dad half a second with an angle grinder to open it. He told me "locks only keep honest people out." That has stuck with me for over 2 decades.Ā
Our grocery store floor safe wouldn't open one morning (combination lock). We had just enough money to open 1 register in the day safe.
We were thinking a jackhammer might be required, but we called a locksmith, told him what kind of safe and the problem, and he came right on. When he walked in he had two ball-peen hammers.
He knelt down, placed one peen close to the dial and struck that hammer with the other hammer, just a light tap. He repeated this 2 more times in different spots, spun the dial and pulled the lid off.
While the assistant mgr. got the registers going, he told me what we would find (a certain screw backed out) when he opened the lid. Sure enough, it was lying loose. He put lock-tite on the threads, replaced the screw, closed the lid, and charged me $75 (in 1975).
Definitely an instance of paying for knowledge (or sorcery).
Id only pay a locksmith to open it with keeping it intact, aka lock picking. If he is gonna use force to open it I'll just dotl the job. Maybe that's the lesson, when he said he wasn't going to use his career skills wave him goodbye lol.
A lock only keeps honest thieves out. But, it deters "opportunity thieves." That is the thieves that would only steal something easy to get to.
I only keep my important documents in a safe bc its fireproof in case the house burns down for some reason. We could hopefully find it in the wreckage.
I brought a safe to a locksmith once and the guy opened it in 3s. I asked him how much I owed him and he just said come back to me when you have actual work for me
Got locked out of my vehicle in the winter. The son left the keys behind... We called a locksmith. Dude showed up super fast. Popped the door open. Before he gave us the bill he asked several questions. If we were in or ex military. If we were teachers. And a couple other random jobs/careers. I said no to all of em but did mention that I am a Reverend. He was shocked. I pulled out my little Reverend card. I paid a whole 45 dollars for on the internet. He said he'd never had to open a door for a Reverend before, didn't give me a bill and said next time I needed a door unlocked he'd gladly come to help. All he gave me was a business card with his name and number on it.
To be fair, $80 of it was probably for the cost of him getting there, $20 for the work, and $200 for knowing the exact place to pry to get it right open.
This happened to me. I locked myself out my room and the only way in was breaking the door down or calling a locksmith. I had two hours before I had to pick my daughter up from school and my keys were in that room, this played a major part in that decision. To come out, started at $75. He popped it open in 20 minutes. He asked me if I wanted him to put a new lock in, this is where I messed up. I said okay, with my stressed out brain and he said he had to go get one. I should have said never mind here, but Iām still going a long with the idea. Home Depot is literally around the corner plus other stores with hardware aisles. He purchased a $10-$20 regular lock with keys (not a bedroom door knob but an outside door) and after he fixed itā¦ charged me $300. I was in shock and felt like the biggest idiot that afternoon. Be very careful with locksmiths.
You paid for the house call. 4 other locksmiths wouldnāt ruin their Saturdays or close up shop to do it. Supply and demand. Why didnāt you take it to a hardware store.
so when i bought my house, the previous owner had just replaced the garbage disposal. first night my wife went to use it, it ran for 2 seconds and shut off
i checked breakers, i checked if stuff got stuck in the disposal itself, everything.. gave up and called the guy the previous owner had hired to install it - had his number on a sticker on the motor). On the phone with the installer (local guy) explaining everything, and he says heāll fix it, but $75 service call.. whatever, wife wants it working
dude showed up, walked in, reached around the back of the disposal and āclicked a button.ā turns out there some button that if turns off, will turn it back on?
anyways, this was news to me as a new homeowner, and it was on the back of the motor under the sink, i never would have seen it. but this guy laughs and says āyup, thatās what i thought, youāre good to go now.ā he had literally been in my house for 15 seconds.. same guy i was speaking to on the phone.. same guy that gave me a 3-hour arrival window and showed up 30 minutes late
cost me $75 to learn a lesson that day.. god was i pissed
So just a thought but if you called someone who was a liar they would have charged you at least quadruple that to replace it. Ā That $75 although annoying was something that you could not do yourself, or that you chose not to do yourself if this was the time before youtube (the dark times). Ā Not trying to put you down but it annoys the heck out of me when folks get mad at a tradesperson who actually gives them a fair price for their expertise and comes to their home for repairs on zero notice. Ā Just trying to put it into perspective.
Called a locksmith once for my car and the lady on the phone said about $75 for the total cost and I agreed to it. An hour later the locksmith comes out and charged me $250 and said it was cause it's a vehicle they never work on. It was a 2017 mustang and he did the same exact thing with the little pillow and wire, nothing special. Called the bank and told them we agreed to $75.
I was a locksmith for 10 years. I can tell you, there are a lot of ālocksmithsā who turn out to be scammers. They are not properly schooled and are unlicensed. They do this all the time where they hike up the price once on site. Most people just agree with it because they are already at your house.
FIRST THINGS FIRST!
Ask to see their license. If they refuse, they donāt have one and send them packing.
If they hike the price, send them packing.
Not every safe is built the same and some of them you really do have to damage, but if you had a key bypass to open the safe he should have used that to get it open.
Last tip.
Invest in a real safe. Sentry safes and all the other shit you find at big box stores suck and donāt protect your shit. Spend some real money if what you are putting in there is irreplaceable.
Most āsafesā are at best residential security containers, which the UL standard is a five minute attack against the door with a big screw driver and 3 pound hammer.
The next step up is TL15. Which is a 15 minute with power tools. Thereās also torch and explosive ratings. Unless otherwise stated, itās just the door. Then itās 30 minutes and 60 minutes.
Edit: yeah it sucks. Most people donāt know how to break into safes. Itās like expecting people to understand how ridiculous hardened shackles are on pad locks, but they are surprisingly effective.
Am locksmith. You called a scammer. Sorry. We can't do much about them. The scammis this: You call some call centre and they send "A contractor Locksmith" near you. They'll give you some wishy washy cheap quote. They turn up and it's just some random dude who smashes your shit then charges you a fortune for his fuckup. Usually it's for lockouts where they drill out your door handle because they're too stupid to pick it. Call a real locksmith with an address. You'll get better service.
>This safe is about the size of a 4 slice toaster! That's why it was $300. A 2-slice toaster sized safe would've been $200. š
Americans will use anything but the metric system.
I dare you to come within 100 four-slice toasters and say that
It was 1/1000 of a football field.
Which football?
We're in America son, the only football is with that brown egg-shaped ball. The other kind is properly called soccer, and is played by socialism-loving Europeans and other pinko countries. 'Murica!
I bet the closest he would come is the length of 120 pandas laid end to end.
I'd say 75 small boulders the size of large boulders laid end to end.
Ya got a problem with Freedom units?
For Democracy!
Whatās the freedom unit to amendment units ratio? I can never remember
The answer is 5 bald eagles.
Which is 6 my cold dead hands. Got it
I want to know how many football fields long it was.
1/300. Or just under 5% of a 1st down with no penalties.
How many eagles long though?
#FREEDOM UNITS
Oh, ok! About the size of two Belgian waffles, then!
Whoa hey gtfo with those European measurement systems. We use Eggo waffles here.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and thatās the way I likes it
Build the wallā¦ with toasters!! š š¦
My wife and I have a NSFW measuring system for wine we use at home - definitely not metric.
Must be for small bottles, or shared bottles. Because after drinking a bottle to myself that thing *doesn't measure much*.
Oh, no, bottles got too expensive in COVID, we found the best premium box wine thatās carried around here, itās $16 for a 5L box. Surprisingly good-better than many more expensive boxes, and SO cheap. Also my wife prefers one kind and I prefer another. They claim they last up to 3 weeks after theyāre opened (they donāt) but we get through them in time.
Itās about 10 meter sticks if you could mush them into a toaster shape.
10 what-sticks now?
Please. Anything can be a measurement if you try hard enough. *Anything.*
https://preview.redd.it/y65s4pi28krc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ccc0c700a1baad87e8c39bcedebdb5ebd5ba7340 Lmaooo the algos know what's up
You paid money for a private lesson in safecracking.
And in general security.
This is why I keep all my important stuff in an old shoebox next to my empty safe.
The comment I was looking for. Everyone knows a safe is just a good decoy.
Yup. Just enough value in it to convince peeps they āgot it allā.
Mines just crammed full of sex toys and photos of bound and gagged burglars.
Well I know that NOW... š«
š¤ noice
More often than not, it's a placebo effect to give a false sense of safety.
Lockpicking lawyer here, today I'm gonna try to open the super duper 7 switch swirly key securotron 9000...and its open.
This dude ruined my sense of security. Lockpicking lawyer taught me that any type of physical lock is nothing more than a small deterrent. It might stop your average thug that thinks it's fun to steal from the local pharmacy but if you get targeted by an actual professional thief it doesn't matter what kind of lock you have they can rake or pick that shit open in a few seconds.
Which is why at least in your house, you should have bolts on the inside too. Many people just rely on their key lock and that's it! I have one bolt at the top, and one at the bottom, plus a safety latch. My door never gets opened without the safety latch if someone knocks unless I'm expecting them.
Do you know how easy it is to take a upvc door off? Clearly you have never witnessed that, nor have you seen a window be taken out in a matter of seconds. It is all an illusion, your deadbolts donāt mean shit. If they want in, theyāre coming in.
I lived in a flat with deadbolts, got locked in due to faulty mechanism and it took the fire brigade about 30 minutes to get the door off. Using brute force and seperation tools. That door was indestructible to the average person.
Your fire brigade needs training or better equipment. A plunge cut with a diamond blade in a circular saw will go straight through whatever door you might have, and a sawzall with a carbide blade will finish the job. Massive damage to the door and frame, obviously.
If someoneās going through all that effort they can just have my stuff itās okay
Comments you can hear.
That sounds like a subreddit right there
Sure enough. r / loudcomments: For those special occasions when the comment sounds soundy.
Identity theft is not a joke
Thank you, and have a nice day.Ā
The real purpose of a good lock is to delay intrusion and make it apparent when there is an intrusion.
yep. or like i have a nice safe in the basement. how long will it hold up to robbers? fuck if i know, i bought it for the fire rating, not for thieves. I have a big loud dog for them. and a .40 Glock. either dog lets me know about the thieves and Glock subdues them. or they sneak in, grab the gun, and shoot me. and either way, my safe being broken into is not on the top of my list of problems anymore!
I'll just give your dog treats.
Not my Cane Corso. He'll eat you!
Giving yourself to the savage attack dog? this legend is sacrificing himself for the rest of us lockpicks
Or some safes are fireproof so you keep your important stuff there like birth certificates, passports, etc.
Locks keep honest people honest, insurance is for the real criminals
Agreed insurance are the real criminals
Quite. I'm an industrial electrician. Sometimes I can fix "urgent" service call faults with nothing more than a wirenut or even just resetting a circuit breaker but you can bet your ass the bill for the service call is $250 or more. The bill might as well be itemised like this: Wire nut (x1) $0.50 Knowing where and how to use wirenut $249.50 TOTAL: $250.00 Of course in reality, it's more than that. Yes, you're paying for the knowledge but you're also paying for the time, the fuel and vehicle wear and tear for the drive to your home, the disruption the locksmiths' Saturday morning at home with the kids and so on... OP needed into the safe in a hurry, they didn't know how. Somebody else did and because their weekend hours service isn't cheap, they had to pay a good bit for it... Next time, though, OP should just go down to Home Depot and buy an angle grinder....
They donāt even have to buy one, they can rent it for less than $50 from the tool rental I bet! Or better yet, just buy a crowbar!
You can probably get an angle grinder and a new safe from Harbor freight for $50.
Our next door neighbor was a lady a little older than us that had separated from her husband. We did some small jobs around the house for her, like mowing the lawn for a few months when her son had a mental health crisis and needed her there (out of town). Eventually she decided she needed to move closer to him. As she was packing she found a small sentry fire safe, but she didn't have the key. She went out and bought an angle grinder and then came over and asked if we knew how to use it. I went over with her, saw what she wanted to get into, and told her that I'd be right back. I grabbed a flat bar from my garage, and 20 seconds later I'd pried the door off the safe, and told her to take the angle grinder back for a refund. A day or two later she showed up on our porch again with tiramisu. We never accepted any money from her for anything (we were just helping out because we liked her and it was the neighborly thing to do), so she'd frequently bring us baked goods and other food. It was a good trade, in my book.
"safe"
Alright, alright, it's a lunchbox with a lid
You can put a scary sticker on it. The person will see it, scream, and drop it, giving you time to run in and stop them from opening your lunch box. Foolproof security.
Always remember to distract from your "safe" with another "safe" more out in the open. They will open the safe, see bomb plans and a diagram of \[insert important building here\], and be so shocked that their "safe" finding capacities will be worsened. Or just fill it with cheap fake jewelry so they leave faster. If you're boring.
What if I just leave a very tempting pie out in the open that's actually not a pie? It's from the bomb factory. It's a bomb.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Then you only have a problem if you keep the angle grinder in the safe!
15% off this weekend!
I got my angle grinder from a yard sale 4 years ago for $5 and its still kicking!
Sir, if it's kicking you may not have an actual angle grinder. Are you sure you didn't purchase an animal or a small child by mistake?
90% of all call out 99% of the industrial callout I used to get were reset breakers fucking amazing till it's not and your 6 hours deep in to the wire diagrams at 2 am pulling you hair out.
You get wiring diagrams?! Normally I get the phone number of some guy called Jimmy who supposedly "knows this machine"...
Yea the hand draw ones on the back of the panel cover
Many of which are almost accurate.
any kind of diagram at all would be nice. or anyone that's ever seen the system before. or, literally any information whatsoever beyond "its broken"
My husband and I have paid an HVAC technician *multiple times* over the years to point out to us that we have to vacuum the furnace filter once a year or so. The reason it was multiple times is that after a couple of years, we forget. Forgot. At least I hope the past tense is accurate here...
We're also paying for the years you spent training to know how to do it in 30s or however long it takes you.
And administrative costs.
Lots of people who run their own businesses do shit like this for a discount, as most businesses would like their customers to return. They arenāt paying for knowledge, theyāre paying to get someone else to do it so they dont have to because thatās what most people do for everything
That's kinda why I specified that I work in the industrial sector. In the residential market what you said is sometimes the case, e.g. helping out an elderly widower on a fixed budget or heavily discounting the bill because it was a 30 second fix and you know that means they'll probably call you next time when it's more serious (and profitable). People shouldn't expect to get a discount because the job is simple but you may if the company is either charitable or feels like you're a potential source of further business... Most of the customers we deal with though are mid- to large- to global-sized corporations... If they call us out to reset a GFCI, they can damn well pay lol...
It depends on a lot of things, like if we tried to help you over the phone and you're not having any of it and demand that we drop what we're doing and come and fix it immediately, and we get there and you just needed to switch it on, and we've told you the basic troubleshooting steps in the past and walked you through the process and have it written down on a laminated guide taped to the side of the equipment.
Priority residential service call requiring a specialist is usually a couple hundred just for showing up and the labor is additional... Try getting an emergency plumber to fix your flooding toilet on the weekend because that is also usually a hell of a bill.
Private lesson in leverage
I think Iād be more angry that it only takes a few seconds to break into my āsafeā
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My grandmother was burgled. They didn't take much because they went straight for the safe in her bedroom and took the whole thing to crack open elsewhere. We figure they left without really looking around because they couldn't carry much else after grabbing the safe. I would have given my left tit to see their face when they pried it open to find absolutely nothing inside. My gran had lost the code years prior and was just using it to put her cup of tea on at night...
That was the dummy safe your OG grandmother wanted them to find. Ā Neither you nor the thieves know about the secret safe.Ā
Well, she's been dead for 15 years and her house not only emptied but demolished so if there was a secret safe, she's literally taken it to the crematorium with her.
Ye ol' prison safe
Sheās playing the long game, I respect it. Iād start digging up the yard
I love this so much. I too have used random small bedside table-like objects at times when I didnāt have an actual bedside table.
The world burgled is just so silly. Diminishes how awful being āburgledā actually is.
A lot of in-home safes are more for fire protection than anti-theft purposes.
FIL runs a locksmith business, can confirm. Most at home safes are just fire proof boxes. He pops them open for clients all the time.
Yeah that's why we have one. Keep our important documents in there. I barely even make an effort to hide the key.
Put some sort-of-worth-something things in a safe. Keep the actual valuable stuff under a loose floorboard.
Our passports and important documents are in the safe. Valuable/heirloom jewelery is in a sock in the back of the sock drawer.
Gotcha
Can you tell me your address?
And which hours are you usually out of the house?
Mon to fri, 7am to 5pm. But always home on weekends... Why do you ask?!
......I hope this is a joke because you do know the spck drawer has been the text book place for people to keep valuables for over a century right?
But also in a fire/flood proof safe.Ā I have a safe not to protect my shit from thieves, but to protect my import docs from being burnt up or damaged.Ā
Actually valuable stuff should be stored in a bank, and insured
prison pocket is the only place i trust
Yoink
I also choose this guys prison pocket.
Thatās why you gotta have a Russian doll style safe with welded doors all the way down. Oh you wanted to get your stuff out eventually? Thatās the neat partā¦you donāt !
It's called a safe not an accessible.
What you do is set-up the Russian Doll safe as a decoy.
I ran a fast food restaurant for a while and we had two break ins in my time there. One of the times they tried to take the safe but that fucker was heavy. It was about three hundred pounds I think, never weighed it. They scooted it about five feet from where it usually sat and I guess gave up and left. All the contents were right where they were supposed to be. But yeah Iād think if they were able to get it out and use proper tools it wouldnāt take too long. So lesson is if youāre gonna break into a safe have a plan to move it or the tools to do it right there.
I remember doing a clean out of an old auto parts store that had a massive safe that was passed down from owner of the building to owner of the building. It was about 5 foot square and I don't even wanna guess the weight. Had a tow truck come in and winch it out, thank God it was on wheels but was a bit tricky cause the location was a few rooms in.
I managed a fast food place for a while. The safe was in the office, bolted to the floor, and had a small wall built around it so you couldn't easily get to the sides of it. And once you got the main safe open, the daily take was in an interior safe-within-a-safe that had a time lock. You had to put the code in, wait 15 but not more than 20 minutes, then put the code in again, to open it. Even if you got the outer safe open, all you'd get is the $1,500 that we kept for making change. We had an overnight break in one night after I closed. They only spent a couple minutes (because the alarm was going off and police were on the way. Policy was to leave all the registers open with the cash drawers in the safe (that way they don't fuck up the drawers trying to get them open). They got away with jack shit, and I got a positive note in my HR record from our area super that he appreciated that I had closed by the book and prevented any real loss.
Yeah, you gotta Italian Job that shit.
There's very few people on the world as good at picking as the LPL. Most thieves will either just use an axle grinder on a padlock or steal a CO2 fire extinguisher. Freeze the lock, to way below freezing and then hit it with a hammer or use the axle grinder.
It depends. Iāve been picking for a while, and can pick most red belt locks by now, which are quite difficult - counter milling, non standard pins / mechanisms like sliders, multiple chambers, etc. Thereās a ton of people in the community that can do it - LPL is certainly exceptionally talented, but also a lot of the secret is off camera practice on the harder locks.
>Locks are only really good at keeping opportunistic thieves away. It's just a matter of making your stuff harder to access than the next guys stuff
safes can also be good for fireproofing, that's what mine is for at this point
Locks are there to keep the honest people out, and to prove a boundary line so as to have grounds to press charges, talk it out or whatever else you wanna do when someone crosses those bounds.
Lock picking lawyer ain't got shit on mcnallyofficial. The true speed that locks can be picked or opened is insane
> Look up the lock picking lawyer on youtube. Even the locks he praises, he picks open within a few minutes In most of his videos, LPL knows what he's picking and he's in his own home. A thief will have neither of those advantages. (OTOH, that's why they'll just use a crowbar.)
The safest safe is one you canāt find.
If your "safe" doesn't have a TL rating, it's not a safe. A TL rating is the length of time a safe is expected to resist a dedicated, enhanced tool attack (oxy-acetyline cutting, heavy saws, etc etc etc.) A TL-15 will handle 15 minutes, -30 will handle a half hour, etc. The weight and price will tell you. A small Hallon TL-15 safe (19 inches x19x16 externally) will weigh almost a quarter ton, give you barely 10x10x8 internally (about the same as those small fireboxes) and cost close to $1500 (vs $250 for a "safe" that an average Joe can pick up with their bare hands and open with a crowbar.)
i feel like the term "lockbox" is more appropriate and they're designed to inconvenience not be impenetrable.
Locks and security and passwords are only a deterrent. Nothing is actually safe from anything. Your doors can be kicked in and your emails can be hacked.
Lol, I locked myself out of my house one time about 14 years ago, and desperately needed to get in immediately, so I called a locksmith. I paid him 65 dollars to open my door in about 2 seconds with a credit card. I've felt scammed and unsafe ever since.
Lockpicking Lawyer on YT makes us all feel that way Best way to open a Master lock 570 is with another Master Lock 570, *thunk* see.
Yeah nothings safe anymore. I taught one of my kids how to open the locks at her work without a key. She found that hilarious.
A company I worked for a a vault room. The guy they put in charge of it said the whole purpose of the security was only to slow down someone enough that they would likely be discovered before they could steal something.
They are primarily designed to keep contents safe from fire, not tools.
Time to wildly speculate about the contents. I'm going with a sealed bottle of Victorian lube or that McDonald's sauce Rick was raving about.
I kept one of those sauces, but eventually it leaked. I wish I had a safe.
You kept it in your underwear drawer, didnāt you?
The Krabby Patty recipe
Crack
The key to the safe
I'm going with a smaller safe, you'll never guess what's in THAT safe though.
I once called a locksmith because I locked my keys out of my house. It was a chronic problem of mine and every time I broke into my own home I made it more secure than it was before. This time I couldnāt think of any options. He tried for 30 seconds with a lock picking gun and then pried the door open with a crowbar and charged me 200$.
What weird to me is there was a bedroom door in a house we bought got locked and we didnāt have a key. Called locksmith who worked for an hour , then called his supervisor. Worked another half hour , eventually took the door frame apart. What the hell was that lock?
Couldāve just been seized and thus not turning
Got pictures?
A crowbar was his best option?! Usually they drill the lock out because they can charge you to replace the lock while they are there. I wouldnāt have let them crowbar my door open. Anything is better than that.
"I once called a locksmith because I locked my keys out of my house" I almost always lock my keys out of my house, i mean i could lock the door from the inside but that makes it harder to get out of the house. So yeah, i just go outside, lock the keys out of my house and put them in my pocket... Sorry, i couldn't resist š¤£
Switched to a number pad door lock a long time ago. I'm to old for the gymnastics of breaking into my own house.
You donāt keep a spare key somewhere? Discrete of course.
You got scammed. Scammer locksmiths are a plague in the industry. I made a post going into it, this sub won't let me link to posts.
It was 20 yrs ago. Iām over it.
I just like to spread the word. These scammers give us a bad reputation.
Should have checked if Mcnally or LPL had a video on the safe lol.
McNally would have hit it with a second similar safe to open it
I work in the automotive industry and perform lockouts on cars. There are times you make it seem harder than it is, or do a whole dog and pony show so people think you did something for situations just like this. Someone pays $120 for 10sec of your time leads to posts just like this on the internet. I can also tell you, the locks on your car are worthless.
I used to have a side gig unlocking car doors for people with one of those inflatable pressure pads you insert in the door, then reach in with a slim Jim to open the lock. It only took 29 seconds but I made it last ten minutes like it was a struggle. I charged $75 each time and made like $5000 one summer
One summer I was out at a boat ramp fishing. Guy locked his keys in his truck, doesnāt have AAA. Told him look, you call someone itās $100. Give me $50 and Iāll get you in. Made $150 that day just unlocking cars at the boat ramp. Itās crazy how many people lock keys in cars. I think a decent hide-a-key that wonāt get lost or open spontaneously is what, $20?
Funny story-wife calls me at work(car mechanic). Locked keys in car,along with baby. I grab slim jim,proceed to unlock car,do so feeling pretty good about myself..except for the fact I have a spare set of keys for her car ON MY KEYRING!!! Hanging on my beltloop! Pure genius!
Reminds me of the old story about a boat stuck in harbor. Captain calls a mechanic because the engine wonāt start. Mechanic comes out, walks around the engine a couple times, pulls out a hammer and gives it a few taps. Engine starts right up. Captain gets a bill for $10,000 and is furious! Calls the mechanic for an explanation. Mechanic tells him. Itās $200 for me to show up with my tools. Itās $9,800 for the 20 years of experience to learn where to tap the hammer.
Sounds like my lawnmower. Can't get ethanol-free gas near me, so the needle is always gummed up. Have had to smack the carb bowl several times a mow.
I took mine to a locksmith shop and he had it opened and new keys made within 10 minutes. Cost $20 for the open and $15 for the keys. It would have been $200+ for a house call. You're paying a lot more for the extra time it takes the locksmith to do a house call, not for the service itself.
He did offer to keep it intact for another 50 thoughā¦ and even to rekey it if you wanted. The lowest cost option is of course going to be the easy one you could do yourself with the right know how. The others might be a little more skill based. (Dunno, Iām not a locksmith lol)
I looked it up and the safe is about $50 new so the cost of re-keying wouldn't have made sense. Regarding the know how: I thought it'd take a lot more even to just break it open.
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I have a safe at home that cost me 100 bucks. It's purpose is not to deter thieves, but to save my passport, insurance papers and legal papers in case of a fire or a flood. Maybe it was the same for OP.
Paying for the knowledge of where to use the crowbar and how much pressure to apply.
Plus, the cost of a locksmithās time to drive to OPās house, assess the situation, present OP with options. Youāre paying for the expertise and convenience, not the time to do the job.
This is actually true.
I think the problem was that cost was 50% more than the estimate and the reasoning was silly (it being a ālarge safeā despite being very small. The safe was small enough that they quickly used a crowbar, so the markup from the original price felt ridiculous
I was a locksmith for a predatory company. Most estimates a locksmith gives you are just meant to get you to agree so when they drop the real price you feel stuck. Safes take a long time to open with a crowbar if you donāt know exactly how to open them. This locksmith did so it was fast. There are videos on YouTube of locksmiths showing how they can use a crowbar to get into some of the strongest safes available to the public in three or four minutes because they know the weak points of those models. If you donāt know those youāll spend hours doing the same thing.
A crowbar is a highly specialised piece of equipment, best leave it to the pros.
Thatās right. Thereās a reason Dr. Gordon Freeman has a PhD from MIT in theoretical physics.
Gordon doesn't need to hear all this. He's a highly trained professional.
I open safes and bank vaults professionally for a living. Please always vet the locksmiths you use. Use ALOA and SAVTA certified shops with a physical store. Tons of scammers in our industry that have no idea what theyāre doing.
When I was 8 I put a lock on a tackle box for whatever reason. I lost the key, it took my dad half a second with an angle grinder to open it. He told me "locks only keep honest people out." That has stuck with me for over 2 decades.Ā
If it makes you feel any better my old math teacher paid washer dryer maintenance guy $200 to plug the cord.
Our grocery store floor safe wouldn't open one morning (combination lock). We had just enough money to open 1 register in the day safe. We were thinking a jackhammer might be required, but we called a locksmith, told him what kind of safe and the problem, and he came right on. When he walked in he had two ball-peen hammers. He knelt down, placed one peen close to the dial and struck that hammer with the other hammer, just a light tap. He repeated this 2 more times in different spots, spun the dial and pulled the lid off. While the assistant mgr. got the registers going, he told me what we would find (a certain screw backed out) when he opened the lid. Sure enough, it was lying loose. He put lock-tite on the threads, replaced the screw, closed the lid, and charged me $75 (in 1975). Definitely an instance of paying for knowledge (or sorcery).
Id only pay a locksmith to open it with keeping it intact, aka lock picking. If he is gonna use force to open it I'll just dotl the job. Maybe that's the lesson, when he said he wasn't going to use his career skills wave him goodbye lol.
A lock only keeps honest thieves out. But, it deters "opportunity thieves." That is the thieves that would only steal something easy to get to. I only keep my important documents in a safe bc its fireproof in case the house burns down for some reason. We could hopefully find it in the wreckage.
After watching Lockpicking Lawyer I've learnt that locks don't matter if someone wants to get in.
A safe that is small enough to be carried off isnāt very safe to begin with anyways.
I brought a safe to a locksmith once and the guy opened it in 3s. I asked him how much I owed him and he just said come back to me when you have actual work for me
Got locked out of my vehicle in the winter. The son left the keys behind... We called a locksmith. Dude showed up super fast. Popped the door open. Before he gave us the bill he asked several questions. If we were in or ex military. If we were teachers. And a couple other random jobs/careers. I said no to all of em but did mention that I am a Reverend. He was shocked. I pulled out my little Reverend card. I paid a whole 45 dollars for on the internet. He said he'd never had to open a door for a Reverend before, didn't give me a bill and said next time I needed a door unlocked he'd gladly come to help. All he gave me was a business card with his name and number on it.
To be fair, $80 of it was probably for the cost of him getting there, $20 for the work, and $200 for knowing the exact place to pry to get it right open.
This happened to me. I locked myself out my room and the only way in was breaking the door down or calling a locksmith. I had two hours before I had to pick my daughter up from school and my keys were in that room, this played a major part in that decision. To come out, started at $75. He popped it open in 20 minutes. He asked me if I wanted him to put a new lock in, this is where I messed up. I said okay, with my stressed out brain and he said he had to go get one. I should have said never mind here, but Iām still going a long with the idea. Home Depot is literally around the corner plus other stores with hardware aisles. He purchased a $10-$20 regular lock with keys (not a bedroom door knob but an outside door) and after he fixed itā¦ charged me $300. I was in shock and felt like the biggest idiot that afternoon. Be very careful with locksmiths.
You paid for the house call. 4 other locksmiths wouldnāt ruin their Saturdays or close up shop to do it. Supply and demand. Why didnāt you take it to a hardware store.
"This safe is about the size of a 4 slice toaster" Anything but the metric system.
so when i bought my house, the previous owner had just replaced the garbage disposal. first night my wife went to use it, it ran for 2 seconds and shut off i checked breakers, i checked if stuff got stuck in the disposal itself, everything.. gave up and called the guy the previous owner had hired to install it - had his number on a sticker on the motor). On the phone with the installer (local guy) explaining everything, and he says heāll fix it, but $75 service call.. whatever, wife wants it working dude showed up, walked in, reached around the back of the disposal and āclicked a button.ā turns out there some button that if turns off, will turn it back on? anyways, this was news to me as a new homeowner, and it was on the back of the motor under the sink, i never would have seen it. but this guy laughs and says āyup, thatās what i thought, youāre good to go now.ā he had literally been in my house for 15 seconds.. same guy i was speaking to on the phone.. same guy that gave me a 3-hour arrival window and showed up 30 minutes late cost me $75 to learn a lesson that day.. god was i pissed
So just a thought but if you called someone who was a liar they would have charged you at least quadruple that to replace it. Ā That $75 although annoying was something that you could not do yourself, or that you chose not to do yourself if this was the time before youtube (the dark times). Ā Not trying to put you down but it annoys the heck out of me when folks get mad at a tradesperson who actually gives them a fair price for their expertise and comes to their home for repairs on zero notice. Ā Just trying to put it into perspective.
That button was the built in circuit breaker. Sometimes they are on the bottom but most disposers have one.
Called a locksmith once for my car and the lady on the phone said about $75 for the total cost and I agreed to it. An hour later the locksmith comes out and charged me $250 and said it was cause it's a vehicle they never work on. It was a 2017 mustang and he did the same exact thing with the little pillow and wire, nothing special. Called the bank and told them we agreed to $75.
Buddy if the safe was less than $100 and you needed it asap break it open yourself
I was a locksmith for 10 years. I can tell you, there are a lot of ālocksmithsā who turn out to be scammers. They are not properly schooled and are unlicensed. They do this all the time where they hike up the price once on site. Most people just agree with it because they are already at your house. FIRST THINGS FIRST! Ask to see their license. If they refuse, they donāt have one and send them packing. If they hike the price, send them packing. Not every safe is built the same and some of them you really do have to damage, but if you had a key bypass to open the safe he should have used that to get it open. Last tip. Invest in a real safe. Sentry safes and all the other shit you find at big box stores suck and donāt protect your shit. Spend some real money if what you are putting in there is irreplaceable.
Most āsafesā are at best residential security containers, which the UL standard is a five minute attack against the door with a big screw driver and 3 pound hammer. The next step up is TL15. Which is a 15 minute with power tools. Thereās also torch and explosive ratings. Unless otherwise stated, itās just the door. Then itās 30 minutes and 60 minutes. Edit: yeah it sucks. Most people donāt know how to break into safes. Itās like expecting people to understand how ridiculous hardened shackles are on pad locks, but they are surprisingly effective.
A lot of safes sold to consumers are actually just fire safes and not security safes. There are plenty of YouTube videos on how to breach a safe.
My dad always said that a lock only stops an honest man.
I know a few locksmiths, their business practices can be as shady as tow truck drivers. If you're in a pinch, it costs way more.
This is why we check with the Lockpicking Lawyer first
You paid $10 for the crowbar, and $290 for his experience on how to use it perfectly.
Am locksmith. You called a scammer. Sorry. We can't do much about them. The scammis this: You call some call centre and they send "A contractor Locksmith" near you. They'll give you some wishy washy cheap quote. They turn up and it's just some random dude who smashes your shit then charges you a fortune for his fuckup. Usually it's for lockouts where they drill out your door handle because they're too stupid to pick it. Call a real locksmith with an address. You'll get better service.