Frequently Asked Questions

We cover Delaware County, PA, Chester County, PA, New Castle County, DE - 42 towns in total. The counties are the boundary, so if your town is not listed it may still be inside the area.

We come to you, every time. Key Sprint Locksmith is a mobile service based in Glen Mills, PA - there is no walk-in shop, so the van brings the workshop to your vehicle or your door.

Because an honest number is not possible in advance. What a job takes depends on the exact lock or vehicle, what has already been tried and where you are. Call, describe it, and we will tell you what is involved.

Sunday through Thursday, 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Friday, 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Closed Saturdays.

Yes. That is a normal job rather than an unusual one - see car key replacement and lost car key replacement.

Rekey it. You have no way of knowing how many copies of that key exist or who has them. See lock rekeying.

Yes - commercial locksmith services covering master key systems, panic hardware, access control and storefront doors.

Not when it is done properly. Non-destructive entry is the standard approach, and it is the reason to call a locksmith rather than force something.

Usually, yes - and it is normally the better answer. Rekeying changes who can open the door while keeping the hardware you already have.

Call (484) 229-1719, or use the request form on the site and we will call you back.

Almost never. The main reason people are told to tow is that a dealer cannot come out to the vehicle, so the vehicle has to come to them. We work the other way around. For the large majority of makes on the road around the towns we cover, everything needed to originate and program a key travels in the van.

Proof that the vehicle is yours, and the vehicle itself. Registration, title or insurance in your name alongside your photo ID is the usual combination. We ask every time without exception - originating a key to a car is precisely the thing that should never be done for someone who cannot show it is theirs.

It should be indistinguishable in use. The blade is cut to the manufacturer's code rather than traced from a worn key, which often means it turns more cleanly than the key you lost had been turning for years. Where the vehicle uses a chip or a remote, that is programmed to the same standard the factory key was.

Both. Older vehicles are often purely mechanical, which is straightforward once the code is read. Newer ones need the electronic side handled properly. The trap is the middle ground - vehicles old enough to seem simple but new enough to carry a transponder that has to be coded, which catches people out when a hardware-store copy will not start the engine.

Because duplicating a key you have is a fundamentally smaller job than originating one you do not. When a working key exists, it can be copied and coded quickly. When the last one is gone, the vehicle has to be read, a blade originated and the immobilizer programmed from scratch. A spare made on an ordinary afternoon avoids all of that.

For a plain mechanical blade, sometimes. The catch is that most vehicles built in recent decades carry a transponder chip, and a machine that copies the metal shape does not copy the chip. The result is a key that opens the door and turns in the ignition but will not start the engine - which is exactly when people call us.

Two working keys is the sane minimum for any vehicle, kept in genuinely different places. One in a bag and one on a hook by the door is not two locations if the bag lives on that hook. Households around the towns we cover that share a car often keep a third with whoever is not driving that week.

Usually more so, because your everyday key has been wearing down against the lock for years. We cut to the vehicle's code rather than tracing your worn blade, so the new key is made to the shape the car expects rather than the shape yours has become.

Frequently, yes - and it is a good moment to do it. A key that is visibly worn, cracked at the shoulder or slightly bent is a key that is going to break. Because we cut to the code rather than copy the object, a tired original does not produce a tired duplicate.

The battery is the first thing to rule out and it is genuinely the most common cause. Beyond that, a fob can lose its pairing with the vehicle, the button contacts can wear through, or moisture can get into the board. We check the simple causes before assuming the expensive one, because most of the time it is the simple one.

Rekeying changes the internals so a different key operates the same lock, and every old key stops working. Replacing swaps the whole physical lock for a new one. If your hardware is sound and the problem is who holds a key, rekeying solves it without buying new locks for every door.

Usually, and it is worth asking for while someone is already there. Front, back, side and garage doors can typically be keyed alike as long as the locks are of compatible types. It also means a lost key is a single clear problem rather than a guessing game about which door it opens.

No. The lock is dismantled, the pin stack changed to a new combination and reassembled to the same specification it left the factory with. A correctly rekeyed lock is exactly as secure as it was, because nothing about its construction has changed.

For the keys, yes - every key that fitted before stops working. Worth checking at the same time is anything else that grants entry: a garage remote, a keypad code, a lockbox left on a spigot. Those outlive a rekey if nobody thinks to deal with them.

A typical house is comfortably a single visit, and larger properties around a nearby neighborhood usually are too. Since we come to you, there is no back and forth - the work happens at your doors with the family able to carry on around it.

Replacement earns its place when the hardware is genuinely finished - the body is cracked, the finish has corroded through, the mechanism is worn past adjustment, or it is a builder-grade lock that was never up to the job. If it is misaligned or stiff but fundamentally sound, that is a repair and we will say so.

It is worth attending to. Looseness usually means fixings have worked free or the lock body is moving in the door, and both accelerate. It also frequently means the latch is no longer meeting the strike squarely, which is what wears a lock out early in the first place.

In most homes around the towns we cover, yes - standard preparations are common. Older houses are where it gets interesting, since a door prepared decades ago may not match anything modern off the shelf. That is a normal part of the work rather than an obstacle; it just means the hardware is chosen to suit the door.

Yes, and it is worth specifying. New locks can be keyed alike to each other, and often keyed to match locks elsewhere on the property that are staying. Otherwise you finish the day more secure and carrying more keys than when you started.

For an exterior door, hardware built for exterior duty rather than the lightest thing that fits the hole. The practical difference shows up in how the lock behaves after a few winters on a door that gets used every day, which is where builder-grade hardware tends to give up.

Duty cycle, mostly. A house door might be opened a handful of times a day; a storefront door in the towns we cover can be opened hundreds. Commercial-grade hardware is built around that number, which is why residential locks fitted to a business door tend to fail within a year.

Anything the public touches, anything on a fire escape route, and any door staff use constantly. Back-of-house doors that open twice a day are a different case, and there is no reason to specify heavy hardware where the traffic does not justify it.

Usually, and it is worth planning rather than leaving to chance. New hardware can be keyed into your existing system so nobody carries a second key. If the current keying has grown up piecemeal, this is a good moment to straighten it out.

Yes. They are their own discipline - hook bolts, pivots, thresholds and mortise cylinders behave differently from a timber door, and a lock fitted without accounting for how the frame flexes will not last. There are plenty of those along the retail strips in Delaware County, Chester County and New Castle County.

It should not. Work is planned around trading, which is a large part of why we are out until 10:00 PM Sunday through Thursday. Doors are done in sequence so the premises stay secure and usable throughout.

Yes, and it is the cheaper order to do things in. Specifying hardware to the door, the traffic and any code requirements first avoids buying something that then has to be worked around - or replaced.

On a business door, stiffness escalates faster than at home simply because of use. A lock that is stiff on Monday can be seized by the weekend on a door taking hundreds of cycles a day - and it fails at the least convenient moment, which for a shop means trading hours.

Commercial hardware is generally built to be serviced, so repair is often the right answer - unlike lightweight residential locks where it can be a false economy. Cylinders, closers and panic hardware are all normally rebuildable rather than disposable.

Directly. The lock is the symptom; the door dropping is the cause. Fixing the lock alone leaves it to happen again, so the hinges and alignment get addressed alongside it - otherwise you are replacing hardware annually and wondering why.

Usually. We are out Sunday through Thursday until 10:00 PM and Friday until 6:00 PM, and closed Saturdays. For most businesses around the towns we cover the evening slot is the one that causes least disruption.

The intent is always non-destructive entry, and that is the normal outcome - your door, glass, trim and weather seals are meant to be exactly as they were. The damage we get called to repair is nearly always from a coat hanger or a wedge used by someone trying to avoid making the call.

Tell us when you call, because it moves the call up. A running vehicle with the doors locked is a fuel and safety problem as well as a lockout, and it is worth flagging rather than mentioning on arrival.

Call 911 first, then call us. That is not a formality - emergency services can force entry immediately and are equipped for a medical situation. A hot car turns dangerous far faster than people expect. Say it in your first sentence so nobody wastes time.

Yes - year, make and model, plus where it is standing. Entry technique varies between vehicles, and knowing beforehand means arriving with the right tools rather than working it out in a parking lot.

Still workable, though it is worth saying on the phone since the approach differs from a cabin lockout. Many vehicles allow the trunk to be reached through the cabin once we are inside.

Rarely. Non-destructive entry is the normal outcome and the aim every time - you keep your lock and your key afterward. Drilling is a last resort for a lock that is already seized or damaged, and if that is where things are heading we will tell you before we do it.

We ask you to show it, and we do ask everyone. Photo ID with the address is simplest. Where that is inside the house - which is often the whole problem - there are other routes: mail, a neighbor who knows you, a landlord confirming by phone. We will work through it with you.

Please do not. A broken window costs considerably more than the lockout, has to be boarded before dark, and leaves the house insecure until glazing is arranged. It is also a genuine injury risk - we have attended plenty of lockouts that turned into a trip to the emergency room.

Call 911 first and us second, and say so immediately when you call. Emergency services can force entry straight away and are equipped for a medical situation. That ordering matters and is worth remembering before you ever need it.

It is a different fault with the same result, and it is worth describing accurately on the phone. It usually points at the latch, the mechanism or a door that has dropped, rather than the cylinder. Knowing that in advance changes what we bring.