In a lockout the vehicle is perfectly fine. You are the one outside it, in a Lynn Headwaters trailhead lot, in the ski-area parking at the top of Mount Seymour Parkway, or on your own driveway with the groceries going warm. A mobile tech comes to the car, opens it without drilling or levering anything, and you drive off on the key that was already on the seat. You are given an arrival window on the call, based on where the nearest tech is.
Seventeen named areas, two municipalities, and a great deal of parking with no street number on it. Name the lot, the level or the nearest cross street, and the closest truck is routed to it before the call ends.
Most other automotive calls on this site are about the key. A lockout is not. The key is fine, the immobiliser is fine, and the car starts the second a door opens, so what you are buying is the door and the speed. Nothing gets drilled and nothing gets prised, and the paint, the glass and the door card are exactly as they were when the tech drives away. The part of it that belongs to the North Shore specifically is that a lockout puts you outside the car instead of sitting in it, which turns weather, daylight and elevation into part of the job rather than background detail.
| Situation | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Standard car, doors locked with the keys in sight | $95–$160 |
| Trunk shut on the keys | $95–$160 |
| Proximity fob or high-security vehicle | $90–$180 |
| Key turns out to be lost, replacement cut and programmed on site | +$60–$260 |
What you drive and what hour you call move the figure. A weekday opening on a standard car with the keys sitting in plain view is the cheapest version of this call, and a proximity-fob car opened near midnight is the dearest. A Horseshoe Bay driveway is quoted off the same sheet as a stall in the Lonsdale Quay parkade, with nothing added for the hill. The lockout figures are for the lockout itself, and whichever version you have, the total for your address is agreed on the phone before anybody sets off, and an after-hours amount, where one applies, sits inside that quote rather than arriving as a line at the car.
Make, model, and somewhere a truck can drive to. Mountain-area addresses are awkward and much of the parking here carries no street number, so name the lot, the parking level, or the nearest cross street. In a ferry lane, say which lane and whether a sailing is loading.
The window you get on the call depends on where the nearest van is and where the car is parked. Stay near the vehicle if you safely can, because the tech phones on the way in and a full trailhead lot looks identical from the road.
You take your own keys back. Before the truck leaves, the tech cycles the lock and closes the door properly to confirm it still seals, which is the part a coat hanger never gets around to.
A car that will not start at least lets you sit inside it. A lockout does not, and that is what the North Shore adds to this particular call. The streets above Central Lonsdale and the Edgemont plateau run colder and snowier than the Lonsdale waterfront, and the ski-area lots sit higher again, so the same half hour is a very different half hour depending on which end of the hill you are standing on. Say on the call if you are exposed, if there is a child with you, or if the light is going, because that changes the order calls go out in.
Where you can wait matters as much as how long. Lynn Canyon Park has a covered area near its main entrance. The Quay market block, Lynn Valley Centre and anywhere indoors at Park Royal all beat standing at a curb. A trailhead pull-off may offer nothing at all, which is worth mentioning on the phone rather than discovering in the rain. If you do go indoors, say which door you will come back out of so nobody is walking a parking lot looking for you.
Leave the car itself alone in the meantime. A coat hanger past the weatherstrip reaches the wiring and glass hardware a tech spends the whole job avoiding, and it turns a routine lockout into a body-shop invoice.
Two versions of this call come up often enough to plan for. The first is a trunk shut on the keys, which is its own job rather than a harder door: the trunk either opens directly or the tech goes in through the cabin and releases it from there, and neither a folded-up rear seat nor a disabled interior release stops that. The second is a push-to-start car with the fob locked inside and no exposed keyhole to work with. Neither is a problem, but they call for different tools out of the truck first, which is why the year and model on the phone save real minutes at the vehicle.
A good share of these calls never leave the customer's own address. You put a bag down to open the tailgate, the doors relock, and you are standing on your own driveway off Mackay Road in Norgate or on a quiet Pemberton Heights cul-de-sac with the fob in plain view through the glass. The terrain then adds its own wrinkles. Driveways on the steeper Prospect Road addresses vary in slope and width, some of the culs-de-sac have nowhere to leave a second vehicle, and up in the British Properties a drive off Chartwell can be long enough that a house number is worth more than a description of the house, with forested ravines behind and no through traffic to orient by.
Deep Cove is the far end of the same pattern. It sits at the end of the road in the literal sense, and Panorama Drive is narrower than a map makes it look, so the address is confirmed before a truck leaves rather than afterwards. The Seymour streets are no easier to describe from memory, fanning east toward Indian Arm instead of running on a grid, and a house number carries a tech there where a neighbourhood name will not.
These are different jobs and the phone call is where we work out which one you have. Keys you can see on the seat or hanging in the ignition are a lockout, which is the quicker and cheaper of the two. Keys that went over the side at the Deep Cove kayak launch, or out of a jacket pocket somewhere on the Baden Powell, are a car key replacement, cut and coded at the vehicle. If you honestly cannot tell which you are facing, say so and the truck loads for both.
Phone 911 before you phone us. Emergency services can force entry as soon as there is a risk to life, and on a warm afternoon that is not a decision worth holding for anybody's arrival window. Ring us straight afterwards as well, and tell whoever answers where the car is standing. Full sun in an open lot at Ambleside Beach runs a much shorter clock than a shaded parking level, and that is the detail that settles whether a damage-free opening is worth waiting for.
A lockout is one phone number. Broken keys, flat fobs, ignitions that will not turn and the locks on the house are all the same truck.