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One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home. You call the locksmith. He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for
by nip 6y ago
One day you come home and realize that you locked yourself out of your home.
You call the locksmith.
He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves.
The next day you receive the bill, 150€.
Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work?
You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute.
—
Recalling it from a discussion with a friend of mine on a related subject: the cost of experience.
- kovek 6y agoAlso, dispatch, and there is no guarantee that the locksmith has orders frequently.
- b3lvedere 6y agoI fully agree with this, but it can't hurt to try and learn some of those tricks yourself. Some locks are surprisingly easy to open.
- blensor 6y agoI recommend the LockPickingLawyer channel on youtube. It's fascinating how easy some locks can be picked.
- williamdclt 6y agoIf I remembered to take my lockpicking tools when going out, I probably also remembered my keys!
- jsjohnst 6y agoI used to keep a rake and tensioner in my wallet. That simple kit is usually enough to get through common locks.
- grugagag 6y agoSpeaking of which there are some croocked locksmiths out there who pretend they cant lockpick the lock, try a few different methods to fail and add to labor and eventually drill through the core, damage the lock, charge you more than 500 and additional few hundred to replace the lock. It happened to my friend’s mom. Sometimes it’s experience but sometimes it’s just overcharging. If it’s higher than market price it may overcharging or better quality
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>Sometimes it’s experience but sometimes it’s just overcharging The things the "hurr durr muh quality goods, muh experienced professional, you get what you pay for crowd" gets oh so wrong is that while you pretty much never get more than you pay for, you can quite readily get less. There's a relevant proverb about fools and their money.
- 27182818284 6y ago>You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute. On the flip side, this was used at one of the first jobs I worked as a teenager selling scummy informational CDs. It isn't that you're paying 6 payments of $29.99 for some CDs, you're paying for John Doe's expert, secret knowledge. We were instructed to use this rebuttal if a customer balked at the price for some CDs.
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoI thought this was going to end something like "so the locksmith comes back the next day and locks you out of your home for two hours. '150€ please. Happy now?'" :)
- _trampeltier 6y agoJust almost a good example. In this case, the biggest part from the bill would be the time to drive to your home. Also it is not just one minute work. It is also the time he took the phone call, prepare, maybe load some special tools on the car, then drive, work, drive back, clean everything, replace some tools, oils, make the paperwork and so on. I did once a kind of such work as electrician, once on a weekend I got a pikett call, the work was done in 10 minutes. I wrote 1.5 hours, then of course a drama .. but finally, even these 1.5 hours was not enought with all the time I spend frome home to back home this saturday morning, because she could not open here electric door.
- aemreunal 6y agoReminds of an exchange, potentially misattributed ([1]) to Picasso: A woman approaches Picasso in a restaurant, asks him to scribble something on a napkin and says she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, "That will be $10,000." "But you did that in thirty seconds," the astonished woman replied. "No," Picasso said. "It has taken me forty years to do that." [1]: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/01/14/time-art/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/01/14/time-art/
- jacquesm 6y agoA woman approaches Yves Saint Laurent, "Oh Yves, I must have a unique hat for tonights' gala". The master seats her, grabs a bunch of ribbons and proceeds to drape her hair in what turns out to be an extremely nice and harmonic creation, and all that in the space of 30 minutes. The woman is ecstatic: "Oh Yves, I knew you would come through, how much do I owe you?" "That will be 10,000 Francs" "10,000 Francs? For 30 minutes?" Without a word the couturier unwinds the ribbons, spools them up nicely and hands the spools to the lady. "The ribbon you get for free.".
- StavrosK 6y agoSurely this would land much better if the lady's reaction were "10,000 francs? For a ribbon?"
- jacquesm 6y agoThat may have been the original, I heard it many years ago.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI wonder how much the person who makes up all these amusing anecdotes about famous people having to quibble about their payment rate gets paid. Probably not enough.
- dspillett 6y ago
- bootloop 6y agoHa. In my case it was 700€, took 3 people and 3 hours, a crossbar broke in half and afterwards the security door needed to be replaced anyway (because at the end they cut it open with an angle grinder). All that at 1 o'clock in the morning. Nobody of the neighbors cared or called the police. 0/10, wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone else. I could have done the same for free. Fun fact: The companies boss paused his anniversary dinner for this job (after two of his employees couldn't do it). He and his wife showed up super nicely dressed (Highheels and everything). He promised he would make it up to her another time. I found it amusing.
- StavrosK 6y ago> I could have done the same for free. But all your tools were behind that door?
- Insanity 6y agoDepending on how much the tools cost, OP might have been able to buy new tools and then do. Then even resell the tools to make some of the money back.
- StavrosK 6y agoSounds like he was paying for the "1 o'clock in the morning" part, rather than the "opening the door" part.
- bootloop 6y agoWell, it was 10pm when they started. I was planning to pay a locksmith not for someone to break into my apartment. But I have to admit that everything was paid for by insurance. So at the end it wasn't much trouble and now it's just a good story.
- masteruvpuppetz 6y ago>I found it amusing. You wanted the door opened or not?
- 0xfaded 6y agoIn the case of locksmiths, yes, because it's easy to open most consumer locks. I just can't do it for friends, or even a lock on a home I rent, because I don't own the physical lock. That 150 euro bill is basically regulatory capture.
- Aeolun 6y agoCan’t your friends temporarily sell you their locks? Or is the problem that it is connected to their house?
- 0xfaded 6y agoMost of my friends rent. And don't tell anyone, but I've let one back into their apartment before ;)
- dharmab 6y agoMy locksmith friend has a private policy where immediate personal friends get free lock work in exchange for personal favors at a later date. E.g. he helped me with a broken car lock, then later I did some data recovery for one of his family members pro bono.
- Aeolun 6y agoAh, that’s a good point.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoAnd for the drive to you, which you didn't see
- spurgu 6y agoYeah you're not paying a plumber to tap on some pipes. You're paying him for knowing which pipes to tap.
- Aeolun 6y agoHonestly, if someone drives all the way to my house and back at my convenience (e.g. when I’m locked out), and only charges me €150 I would consider that fairly cheap.
- neilwilson 6y ago£1 for hitting it with a hammer £999 for knowing where to hit and how hard
- karmakaze 6y agoI've heard a similar thing about paying a plumber for knowing where/how to strike the hammer. It also occurred to me that some of my work looks trivial when done--a very small source change that fixes broken edge cases by making something invisible more regular or consistent. Edit: After shipping the changes and winning the case, send the PR diffs.