hellothere251

Not specific to our trade but wondering if anyone else encounters this, big apartment complex in town gets bought out by a big holding company, all the maintenance/management guys I deal with are all still there but they have new bosses.

New company says, we need you to invoice us through our system, VendorShield, and they charge a $90 ANNUAL fee! I barely do any work for these guys, a few svc calls here and there and some parts sales, I call the manager over there I have been dealing with for 10 years and tell him were not paying that. He says just add it to a bill, ok fine. "Misc parts-$90"

I have to make an account on their PITA portal which takes way too long to set up, then they wa

Wondering if anyone has seen a huge uptick in phishing/scam emails where they try and get you to login to your gmail acct so they can steal your credentials? Looking at my inbox looks like we got 5-6 in the past week, it is always either an invitation to a party or a job proposal where it asks you to click a link to review. The job proposal ones in particular are INCREDIBLY detailed, we got one last week from the head maintenance guy at a school, it was from his email, on the school letterhead, looked 100% legit. Called the guy to check and he "hadn't got around" to warning everyone on his list yet, sheesh! Do you think it is because we are a security company or is everyone getting these? Wa

I have a firm "no nissan push button prox" policy but I have never done a prox twist, got my first call for one today. It is for a 2012 Nissan Pathfinder Silver, do I have to worry about bricking the BCM on these? Inclined to just say no, I have plenty to do.

Anyone use this?

https://www.trend-usa.com/lock-jig

friday before memorial day weekend, slow as hell, have tons to do next week already but either waiting for parts or nobody wanted to schedule the work for today. you guys busy?

Putting in a bid to do a pretty decent sized housing complex that wants to go SFIC, they aren't interested in a restricted keyway which I can understand, thinking I should get something somewhat obscure but not so much that availability would be a problem, would also like something that there isn't a lishi tool for so Best A is out.

We have done alot of Best E in the past but they are kind of a pain to clamp, asked my distributor what they had alot of and they recommended the KSP KMT keyway, thoughts?

Just stamped the wrong stamp on about 25 restricted keyblanks like an idiot, anyone have any neat products for filling in key stamps? Grinding it off looks like crap, usually I dont do this many and stamp over them but this is too many!

Thinking I will have to do a bit of putty and hit it with a bit of brass colored spray paint, if someone has a better method would love to hear it.

Just wondering what everyone does for these calls where someone who isnt the resident is staying somewhere and locks themselves out. I hate to do it but I always decline these calls, they have no proof of residence, a phonecall from the owner or even a texted drivers license really isnt enough and its not worth the liability. Am I being too careful?

Edit: Everyone is saying a texted drivers license is fine, I thought this might be the case. Photo editing tools are more powerful and easier to use than ever, are you not worried someone is ready for this and has a photoshopped one ready to go?

Doing a 2018 F-150 today that was owned by a power company(now owned privately), using an ilco lookalike which I know is bad but transponder island was out of stock of OEM refurbs so I figured I would give it a go.

I was using AD smart pro, on the initial connection it said it detected something interfering with immobilizer system, I forget exactly what the message was but key count wouldn't be available. I have seen this before, havent had any problems. SP reports key added successfully but it still wont start the vehicle! Original key still works fine, scanned the ilco key with my xhorse and it shows that it is locked, ran the procedure 2 times still would not start.

I talked to AD suppo

How do you get this apart to rekey, is there a tool for pulling those pins? I did the wrong one accidentally and it just had roll pins which I could tap and pull, not sure what to do with this.

https://preview.redd.it/rkgws71bekjg1.png?width=362&format=png&auto=webp&s=414004fc4fadb458947920613277d00c2022915e

https://preview.redd.it/vi8g64t6r5jg1.jpg?width=3472&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e86703e94e9ae26e8547869e253dc3e3bbaa4758

Had a crazy day today, I do residential, commercial and auto(non-euro) but I do NOT do safes, I have made that very clear over the years, I always farmed these calls out to other smiths and never heard anything back so I assumed they got taken care of by guys that knew what they were doing, now Im not so sure. My boss is old school, hes been doing this for 30 years but before running a lock shop he was a carpenter and is mostly self taught, not the kind of guy to go take courses or invest in expensive tools(he is a real yankee for sure), but hey he always had work to do so