Home Depot vs Locksmith: What You Need to Know

There are more Home Depot stores in Vancouver than Locksmith Key Shops by a huge margin. At Home Depot, you can buy locks, get your keys copied, and even hire a contractor to install locks and other door hardware. Compared to a Professional Vancouver Locksmith, these goods and services are often cheaper at Home Depot. So what are the differences between Home Depot vs a Locksmith Key Store? This article will discuss a few of the differences you should know to make an informed decision.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please call or text me at 604-363-2760 or email me at alex@locksmithvancouver.com. Our Downtown Vancouver Key Store is open Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm and is located on the bottom floor of the SFU/Harbour Centre next to the BC Liquor Store. Our Mobile Service is offered every day from 8am to 11:30pm. Finally, just a reminder that our Port Coquitlam location is mobile only and not open to the public.

Great things about Home Depot

First of all, I should make clear that I love Home Depot! I probably visit the one at 900 Terminal Ave, Vancouver or the one at 1069 Nicola Ave, Port Coquitlam, at least once a week.

Most people in the construction industry also love Home Depot. Sure we have our specialty distributors offering an in-depth range of products that Home Depot cannot match. However, for everything else, Home Depot is truly a one-stop shop that gets many types of jobs done. The great things I like about Home Depot includes:

1. Huge selection of construction related products
2. Ability to browse about my leisure
3. Fantastic online inventory management system
4. Home Depot’s enormous economies of scale
5. Open 365 days a year and late at night

First, Home Depot has screws of every type, construction supplies, hand and power tools, and the list goes on. From my perspective as a professional Downtown Vancouver locksmith, I buy all my Weiser products from Home Depot as most locksmith distributors no longer carry them or in very limited quantities. 

The second thing I love about Home Depot is that I can take a broken part to the correct aisle and directly compare with the products in stock. When you deal with a wholesale distributor, you have to know what you are looking for. You cannot just browse and compare at your leisure.

Technically, I can “browse” at my local lock distributor due to the close relationship I have built with them over the years. However, it’s always a bit awkward and I cannot freely roam as I wish.

Third, I appreciate how an entire store’s product lines and inventory levels are easily found online. That level of information is simply unheard of with smaller local distributors. Outside of the Home Depot network, there is always an element of uncertainty whether or not the part I ordered is in stock.

Usually, when my distributors tell me there is one item left on the shelf, there is virtually 100% chance it won’t be there and is simply a counting error. If I order a product and there are less than 3 listed in the distributors’ inventory system, I always ask for a physical check to verify the item is really there. I have been disappointed too many times in the past to make a rookie mistake and not ask for a physical check. However, even with a physical check, you might end up getting the wrong part and find out only after you arrived at the client’s job site.

The beauty of Home Depot’s inventory management system is that what you see online is almost always correct. If the website says there is one left, there is a very good chance that there is actually one left. 

Home Depot obviously spent millions of dollars on their inventory management system and it is a thing of beauty. One thing a contractor or a locksmith hates is uncertainty. If we are going to promise a product at a certain price point to a client, we want to be very certain about the item’s availability and pricing before sending that quote. 

The fourth thing I love about Home Depot is their economies of scale. Like Costco, Home Depot can buy their inventory directly from the manufacturers at the lowest price point possible. As a result, Home Depot prices are usually the lowest for the same item at the distributors. Which is why most lock distributors stopped carrying brands like Weiser. They just could not compete with Home Depot on pricing.

Finally, the fifth thing I love about Home Depot is the store hours. Home Depot is open 7 days a week even on statutory holidays (albeit with reduced hours). All lock distributors are open only Monday to Friday 7am to 4pm. So if one of the clients needs something not in stock over the weekend, Home Depot is usually my only option.

Things I don’t like about Home Depot

While I love Home Depot and my job as a Downtown Vancouver locksmith would be much harder without it, not everything is awesome about Home Depot. Unfortunately, they probably can’t change some or any of the following isseus because it’s tied directly to their business model. So here are a few things I don’t like about Home Depot as a locksmith:

1. Offers great breadth of products, but not a great depth of product
2. Not a great source for specialty parts
3. Only carries the cheapest Residential Lock Hardware

First, Home Depot is great for most generic things and that’s the biggest problem with Home Depot – the word “generic”. Home Depot has to carry a bit of everything for their client base which means they can’t carry an in-depth selection in every category.

For example, if you search the word “lock” on Home Depot Canada’s website, it will bring up 1854 products of which ~620 are available at a local store. In comparison, a lock distributor will carry thousands of products just in the “lock” category.

Second, Home Depot will never carry anything non-standard, custom, or unique. They are in the business of appeasing the broad customer base. If you’re looking for something special, you have to contact a professional locksmith in Vancouver.

For example, several weekends ago, I got called to an emergency job where a client’s deadbolt had stopped working. Right away, I could tell this was going to be a nightmare job because the client’s door was prepped for a 5” backset deadbolt.

5” backset locks were popular in the early to mid 20th century in the British Commonwealth. The only places a Canadian locksmith will encounter them are in older heritage buildings. So out in Eastern Canada which has cities with longer histories, it’s not uncommon for locksmiths to carry a stock of 5” backset deadbolts and knobs/levers.

As a relatively younger city, 5” locks never really took off in Vancouver. There is a small cluster of buildings in the English Bay area that were designed with 5” locks. Otherwise, nobody else uses them. In other words, most locksmiths would not carry these in stock. 

In turn, Home Depot would never carry such a specialty item as well which made the job way more difficult than if the incident had occurred on a Monday. 

Third and last, Home Depot does not carry anything of really great quality. While they may offer brand names like Schlage, they only carry the cheapest J Series or the better F series at best. If you are looking for Grade 2 or higher, or commercial locks, Home Depot is not for you. You should contact a professional locksmith in Vancouver for professional quality products.

When to find a Locksmith

So if Home Depot is so great and if contractors also go to Home Depot, when should you find a Locksmith or a Professional Lock Store?

Copying Keys

If you have ever visited a Home Depot recently, you would know that they no longer offer a key cutting service by a Sales Associate. Instead, each store now has a Minute Key automated key kiosk. This little machine will scan your key shape and copy a key based on its measurements.

While these machines are marvels of technology, there are several problems with them:

1. Very limited selection of keys
2. Slow and inaccurate copies
3. Lack of accountability

First, the key kiosk is like a vending machine and can only have a small limited number of different keys. At our Key Store in Downtown Vancouver, we have hundreds of different key types. As such, you may find your trip to Home Depot may have been wasted if you need anything beyond the common keys (eg. SC1, SC4, KW1, or WR5). 

I’ve also heard from clients that these machines cannot scan really small keys. So if you are looking to copy your mailbox or smaller padlocks keys, you should come to our Key Store at 555 West Hastings St. 

Second, the automated machine is painfully slow. It can take up to several minutes to copy a single key. At our Key Store, it takes about 10 seconds to copy a key. So if you have multiple keys to copy or simply value your time, visiting a professional key shop may be a better use of your time.

In addition, the kiosk tends to make fairly awful copies. Instead of using a calibrated tracer to duplicate your key, it measures the key cuts then it makes a copy based on what it “thinks” they should be based on the key type you have selected. This can produce some pretty awful keys that will not work at all or not work smoothly in the lock.

This lack of accuracy is probably also due to the lack of maintenance and calibration. At a Professional Key Shop like ours, we check the calibration of our machines at least once a week or before every large key order. A Minute Key machine probably gets calibrated only once enough people complain that it’s not working properly. 

Finally, there is a certain lack of accountability with Minute Key machines. If a copy does not work, it’s not certain you can get your money back. After all, Home Depot can just blame that it’s your original key’s fault and it’s not their machine anyway. 

On the other hand, our Key Store has a no-question-asked return policy on our key copies. If it doesn’t work to your satisfaction, just return it. We used the lock industry’s best key duplication machines and check calibration frequently. If we can’t copy your key, you’re probably SOL.

Copying Fobs

Home Depot does not copy fobs. So if you are seeking to copy your home fob, please come by our Key Store near Gastown.

Better Quality Locks and Contractors

I always make sure to carry super cheap deadbolts/knobs/levers with me to a job. Some clients just want the cheapest locks possible and I want to make sure I can make them happy.

My cheap locks are probably cheaper than the ones you can find at Home Depot. However, they will be installed professionally and come with a at least 1 year warranty on both parts and labour. If they stop working for whatever reason (short of a break-in or deliberate tampering), I will replace that lock for free. 

Most locksmiths in Vancouver do not offer a 1 year blanket warranty on both parts and labour. There are a few that offer a 1 year warranty on parts because it’s usually covered by the manufacturer and costs nothing. Most trades do not like offering warranties on labour because time is money. 

If you want to find a high quality locksmith, electrician, plumber etc., ask how long they will warranty their labour for. Professionals who stand by their work will offer longer labour warranties and happily put it in writing. 

You will also be surprised by the number of contractors whose “warranties” end the moment they get paid. 

This particularly applies for Home Depot contractors. I’ve never been happy with the Home Depot vetting process for their service contractors. The few I have dealt with in the past are some of the most unprofessional and untrustworthy people I’ve met in the construction industry.

I hate to brush all Home Depot contractors with the same brush and there are probably some great companies out there in that program. However, the ones I’ve dealt with in the past have all been stomach-turning experiences.

Conclusion

Home Depot is a great resource for both contractors and clients alike. They have a huge selection of inventory and are open 365 days a year and late into the evening. However, their product offering tends to be fairly generic so if you are looking for anything beyond the basics, you should reach out to a professional locksmith, like myself.

If you have any questions or comments, please call/text me at 604-363-2760 or email me at alex@locksmithvancouver.com. I’ve recently gotten calls from people overseas about my services and expertise. It’s always a pleasure to meet new people. However, if you are calling from an international number, I may not always pick up. We get a lot of spam calls as our phone number is public. I apologize in advance, and I recommend sending us an email or text if you are not from Canada.