How To Unlock Your Car – a Complete Step By Step Guide

 

Getting locked out of your car is annoying. It’s frustrating, unexpected, but most of all – it’s expensive.
As a locksmith, we open about 5-8 cars a day. In fact – that’s mostly what we do since the problem is so common. Yet when you’re locked out, you may have more options than you think to get back in. In this article, we’ll guide you through these options so you can know for sure whether you even need a locksmith. Using this step-by-step guide, you may be able to open it yourself.

Are You Really Locked Out?
First, make sure you’re actually locked out. This may sound silly but you’d be surprised how many times I’ve arrived to unlock a customer’s car… just to find out one of the car doors was unlocked.
Before you do anything else, check all the doors and make sure they’re all actually locked. Try the trunk too, it’s often overlooked and many times you can get back into the vehicle by folding the seats through the trunk.

Where Is Your Spare Key?
So you checked all the doors and the car is definitely locked. What’s next?
You may consider using your spare key, but this can be tricky depending on your situation. Is your spare key at home? How far are you? Do you have someone who can bring it over? If you’re in a hurry or far away from home, trying to open the car yourself or calling a locksmith may be your best choice.
An average locksmith fee for unlocking a vehicle is around $70, but it can go as high as $140 depending on your vehicle. And yet sometimes it’s still a better option than going through the hassle of rushing home to get the spare key. If your house keys are also locked in your vehicle, keep in mind it’s almost always cheaper to get your car unlocked by a locksmith than your house.

Should You Call a Locksmith Or Open It Yourself?
After exploring the immediate options, you need to decide if you should call a locksmith or unlock your car on your own. Here are the main factors to consider:

1. Tools: Since you probably don’t have professional car opening tools, you’re going to have to improvise using tools you find around you. As I discuss more in-depth later, you mainly need one tool to wedge the door slightly open, and another tool to reach into your car and unlock it from the inside. There are many tools you can use to achieve that, but if there is nothing you can use around you, you may have to call a locksmith after all.

2. Possible damage: Locksmiths use special tools that are made specifically for the purpose of opening locked cars. Using these tools makes it extremely easy to unlock almost any car without damaging it. When using improvised tools, especially if you’ve never done this before, you may cause some damage to your car. The amount and severity of the damage depend on the tools you’ll use and how complicated the car you’re trying to unlock is. The most common types of damage I’ve seen are tears to the door’s rubber seal and small scratches to the door’s plastic panel and frame. In rarer cases, you can end up with a slightly bent door or a broken locking mechanism.

3. Price: The fee to get your car unlocked can vary from $50 to $150, depending on your car, time of day, and location. But as I discuss later, with a little bit of shopping around you can almost always find someone who will do it for 50-60 dollars. If you have absolutely no money or don’t mind potential minor damage to your car, you should try to unlock it yourself, but if you find a cheap locksmith and have a bit of money to spare, doing it yourself might not be worth the hassle.

Calling a Locksmith (And getting the best price possible)
Just like any other service, some locksmiths are cheaper than others. With the right tools, unlocking a vehicle is pretty simple and doesn’t require much skill, so the cheapest locksmith is going to do the job just as well as the most expensive one.
So how do you find the cheapest price? You shop around. Call 5 different locksmiths and ask them for an EXACT total price to unlock a vehicle, including service call and labor. If they tell you they have to see the car to determine the price or that they can only price the work on-site, cross them out and move on to the next one.
Any locksmith should be able to give you an exact total price over the phone. After you got a few prices, have the cheapest locksmith come over.

Should You Break a Window?
You should only consider this option as a last resort in an emergency. First, getting a new window will definitely cost more than even the most expensive locksmith, and second – you’re much more likely to hurt yourself in the process.
If you can’t unlock the car by yourself and don’t have the money to pay a locksmith, try your very best to find someone to borrow the money from. If your child or pet is locked in the vehicle, call the police or the fire department and they will come immediately as this is treated as an emergency. I recommend breaking the window only in situations that are potentially life-threatening like if your child or pet is locked in the car on a very hot day, or if you’re locked out and it’s freezing cold outside.
Naturally, if there is someone in the car, always break the farthest window away from them. Car windows are made of protective glass and are not easy to break. If you have a tool like a hammer or a screwdriver it would make the job easier, if you don’t – look for a medium size rock and aim for the center of the window. Make sure you do it extremely carefully as the window will usually shatter into small pieces.

Slim Jims and Tennis Balls
Back in the day, most cars could be easily unlocked with a slim jim – a long, thin piece of metal you would slide into the side of the door and pull up to engage the door’s manual button. As car locking mechanisms became more advanced, this method became harder and less effective.
As most cars nowadays have electronic wiring going through the door, using a slim jim can also cause significant damage to the car. There are many theoretical methods to unlock vehicles. Some of them work on specific cars, but most of them don’t work at all (like the tennis ball method). As a locksmith who has unlocked thousands of cars, we can tell you that the only proven way to unlock every vehicle is by unlocking it from the inside.

At BarzzLocks we can help you with all types of locks and locksmith services, here are the details to reach us.
ADDRESS: 30 Howard Pl #1, Kitchener, ON N2K 2Z4, Canada
PHONE: +1 2268994427
EMAIL: barzzlocks@gmail.com
WORKING DAYS/HOURS: Mon-Sun / 9:00 AM - 8:00 PM