This morning I had two broken locks to open. The first broken lock was broken by the customer, but I think the second broken lock was damaged by a locksmith!

I got to the first job and the customer had lost the keys to a mortice lock, on their internal door. Somewhat optimistically they had tried to drill the lock, but unfortunately had drilled in the completely wrong spot. They had then proceeded to drill right the way through the mortice lock and into the handle on the other side of the door. The lock had now totally seized up. By the time they called me, there was very little I could do but drill the life out of the broken lock and battle away until it was open.

If you ever have a problem with one of your locks, whether you've lost the keys or your lock is broken, it really is worth calling a locksmith rather than having a go yourself. I would normally have picked that lock in a few minutes, leaving no damage, but instead a quick and easy job became a long difficult job, leaving two holes in the door and could, potentially,could have cost a lot more money to do.

The second broken lock today was in Hockley, in Birmingham. I was told that the lock had suddenly just stopped working, but as soon as I arrived there, I could see that it had been drilled already. Personally I would never have to drill one of these locks (a Chubb BS3621 deadlock)  as I would pick it, but the drill hole was in the correct spot if you were to drill it. This would lead me to believe that it was a locksmith who had been there before me. However, this "locksmith" had also totally drilled out the curtain (the part of a mortice lock that "throws" and retracts the bolt) so there was no way of retracting the bolt. He had obviously got nowhere doing this and decided to literally smash the lock out of the other side of the door with a hammer and screwdriver! It was quite honestly, the worst attempt at a lock opening I have ever seen!

It's one thing for a customer to have a go at opening a lock and messing it up, but for a "locksmith" to do it is quite another and to make matters worse, they obviously didn't get in and just left it!

It's bad enough that a "locksmith" can't pick mortice locks and has to drill them, but to then drill in totally the wrong spot, which then prevents the bolt from retracting and then smash the whole lock out of the back of the door, taking a great chunk of the door with it, really is a disgrace. (I took some photos, I'll put them on the site soon!).

I'm afraid though, that this is often the way now in the locksmith trade. There are so many newcomers coming into the business on the back of a 2 day course, offering to come out very cheaply, but then totally unable to actually do the job. Until we get some sort of regulation, I expect it will only get worse!