If you can call, call — it is the fastest thing you can do. If you cannot, leave your name and a number and we will call you back.
The price we quote before leaving is the price you pay, and for it to be accurate we need to understand the job. You do not need technical vocabulary. Three things are enough.
The first is where you are, and here visitors have an advantage they do not realise: you almost never know the street address, but you always know the landmark. The name of the hotel or condo tower, the kilometre marker on Kukulcan Boulevard, the plaza across the road, the Supermanzana number on the sign at the corner. Any of those gets a technician to you faster than a postal address does — house numbering downtown does not always follow the order of the street, and inside the Hotel Zone the kilometre marker is what everybody navigates by.
The second is what kind of access it is: apartment door, house, hotel room, condo, shop shutter, car, safe. If it is a door, look at whether there is a metal plate around the keyhole and whether the door catches in more than one place when it closes. That tells us whether it is a standard cylinder or a high-security one, which are opened differently and priced differently.
The third is what actually failed. Keys shut inside, key snapped in the cylinder, key turns but nothing happens, key lost entirely — each needs different tools and sometimes different parts. Saying it on the phone is what stops the technician arriving without the one thing he needs.
Before the technician arrives, find something that shows you have the right to be there. For a vacation rental, the booking confirmation with the address plus your passport is the usual combination. For a hotel room, the front desk can confirm it. For a home you live in, an ID with that address, a utility bill or the lease all work; if you rent and have nothing to hand, the landlord confirming by phone is fine.
For a car we need the registration, the purchase invoice or the rental agreement, plus your ID. For a safe, proof it is yours or authorisation from whoever runs the building.
If you are inside a resort, a gated community or a condo tower, tell security a locksmith is on the way the moment you hang up. It is the single biggest cause of a slow arrival, and it is the one thing we cannot fix from our side.
You pay when the work is done, never before. Cash in pesos, card — the technician carries a terminal — or US dollars at the rate we confirm on the phone before he leaves.
If you need an invoice for expenses or insurance, say so when you ask for the quote rather than at the end, so it is prepared with the right details from the start.