How to Prevent Getting Locked Out

Getting locked out of your house, business, or vehicle can be incredibly stressful. You could be stuck out in the snow, rain, or heat. It could make you late for work, or an important meeting. There are things we can do though to help prevent getting locked out.

• Give a spare key to someone you trust

• Only lock your doors with your keys

• Change your batteries once a year

While not perfect, these three simple ideas can help prevent misfortune.

Spare Keys

Giving a spare key to someone you trust is a great way to prevent a pricey locksmith bill. While at Crono Lock we don’t charge extra for after hours, not all locksmiths are so kind. A lock out service could end up running you a few hundred dollars, specially if you’re unfortunate enough to use the services of an unlicensed locksmith. While it might not get you back into your house or business immediately, leaning on a friend or family member could save you.

Only Lock Your Doors With Your Keys

For obvious reasons this option defeats the purpose of electronic locks, but we’ll come to that next. However, if you’re still kicking it old school with a purely mechanical lock, only lock your door with your keys. What I mean is, don’t use an entrance knob or lever. Look, the real security is in your deadbolt. Latches are a weak form of security. Your lever latch is really just there to keep the door closed. It’s super easy to lock your front door by just pushing the plunger down and walking out. Eventually though, you’re going to shut the door and your keys are going to be inside. Maybe you’re having a busy day and you forgot them on the counter. Maybe you’re wearing your Jordan sweats and they slip out onto the couch. It happens all the time. If you lock your door with your keys, you’ll have your keys with you every time. Now this won’t help you if you lose them while you’re out, but that’s why you fall back on the spare key.

Change Your Lock Batteries

Okay, electronic locks, they’re great. Man do they make life easy and convenient. That is until the batteries die, or are dying. Change your batteries once a year. Don’t wait for the lock to scream at you, just change them. Most locks use one 9 Volt battery, or four AA’s. They’re cheap, maybe $5-$10 tops, a lock out is going to cost you $90 through us, or up to $500 by some of the less than reputable locksmiths. Now your vehicle remote you can probably get away with changing less often. You might even be saying “yeah but my car won’t lock with the keys inside it!” which is true, sort of. If your vehicle has this feature, it works by scanning for the remote. If your batteries are dying or dead, if the vehicle scans and doesn’t see the fob, its going to lock. So even though the keys are physically in the car, if the batteries are dying, it will still lock.

Another issue you’ll avoid by changing your batteries is corrosion. The longer you leave the same set of batteries inside a lock, the more likely it is for that battery to start leaking acid and corrode your terminals. Once this happens, the lock can sometimes be cleaned, other times you’ve bricked your lock.

Wrapping Up

While these three tips are not going to 100% protect you from misfortune, they’ll certainly limit the damage that can be done. No one likes an unexpected bill, a little bit of pre-planning can save you in the long run.

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