Alameda neighborhood · 24/7
West End: the far end of the island, the Webster Street shopfronts, and a lot of front doors that more than one household uses
The western half of the island out toward the tubes: closer-packed blocks, plainer and often older housing with a high share of it rented, small apartment buildings between the houses, and the Webster Street shopping run through the middle. Twenty-two minutes from the van.
~22 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Twenty-two minutes is the longest run on the main island and the reason is simple length. The van works from the Park Street end, the island is narrow and long, and the West End sits past everything else on it, with the tubes at the far tip rather than a bridge in the middle. Nothing about the price moves with that. The same published list applies out here, the $89 service call sits inside every figure the same way it does twelve minutes back down the street, and the figure you hear on the call is the figure on the emailed receipt. What the distance changes is the wait, and the wait is said out loud before you decide to take it.
Housing on these blocks is where the island's central question comes up most often. Buildings put up for one family are now two, three or four homes, and a good share of them are rented, so the front door on the sidewalk is a door in common while the door at the top of the stair is somebody's home. The line between the two is not ours to draw and it is not complicated: the door you live behind is yours to call about, at $132 to $242 for a lockout or $30 to $47 to repin when a resident changes, and anything the whole building passes through is ordered by the owner or the manager. A written line from either is enough, and it is asked for on the phone rather than discovered at the door.
Small work follows from that shape and it is worth batching. A mail bank where one slot has lost its key, a laundry door that has stopped catching, a basement door propped with a brick since spring: each gets its own line inside a single agreed figure when the technician is already at the building, which is a great deal cheaper than three separate visits. Where a door has actually been forced, repair is $169 to $445 and covers the frame, the strike and the cylinder that took the load, with the parts named on the receipt in language an insurer or a manager can file without translating it.
Webster Street is the commercial half. Small independent shops, restaurants and markets behind aluminum and glass, cycled a few hundred times a day, with a service door onto the back. Storefront door locks are $162 to $472 per opening, a business lockout is $141 to $258, and an exit device on a rear door runs $302 to $769, though more of those calls end in adjustment than in a new device. Kitchens open early and lock up late, so the hours here are real: $50 is inside the figure from eight in the evening to midnight and $88 from midnight to seven.
Say whether the door is the one on the sidewalk that several homes use or your own at the top of the stair, and give the unit number if there is one. For a shop on Webster, say whether it is the glass front, a rear door onto the lane, or the street door to a stair, and what time you open and close.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about West End
Twenty-two minutes on an island this size. Is that real?+
It is, and it is length rather than traffic. The van sits at the Park Street end, the island runs long and narrow, and the West End is past everything else on it. The figure is an average taken from where the van actually is when you call. Nothing is added to the price for the drive, and a shorter number is not invented to win the job.
The front door of my building is shared and nobody knows who manages it.+
That happens, and it is a question for the building before it is a question for a locksmith. Getting you into your own home tonight does not depend on the answer, at $132 to $242. Changing what is fitted to the shared door does, and it needs a message from the owner or the manager. Say which of the two you need when you call and the visit is set up for the one that can actually be done.
We have three small jobs in one building. Do they each carry a service call?+
No. Once a technician is at the building, a mail bank, a laundry door and a basement cylinder are separate lines inside one agreed figure, with the $89 counted a single time. Say how many openings there are while the number is being set, so nothing turns up on the receipt that was not named beforehand.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say whether it is the street door or your own, and the rest of the call is short
Alameda and Bay Farm, at any hour. Which leaf it is decides who approves the work, the door itself decides the work, and the work decides the number, which is settled on the phone with the $89 visit and any late hour already inside it. It reads the same on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.