Hall of Shame
Why use a qualified locksmith? Here are a few reasons....
Click to enlarge photographs
Well, this one takes some beating, the 3 pictures above show you the inside, the outside and the door frame views. The "locksmith" removed the existing locks and has fitted a piece of scrap aluminium to both sides of the door. He has also badly fitted the wrong lock into the door. One the worse examples I've seen.
The above picture shows a hole over 2" across made by a "cowboy locksmith" called from the telephone book. There was no need to make a hole in the door at all and this door was ruined.
This picture shows a Chubb 5 lever mortise lock (or what used to be one!). The cowboy in this example has drilled quite a number of holes (circled yellow) and clearly had no idea what he was doing. The fragments on the right are what remains of the internal parts. Even with this level of destruction he still couldn't open the door and resorted to using a crowbar, just look at the areas circled orange.
Another new door required.....
This popular Chubb mortise lock above has has been opened by practically cutting the entire lock in half. In order to do this there was enormous damage done to the customer's door. A truely fine example of a cowboy at work.
It would have been time consuming to do this level of destruction and an expensive job to correct for the customer.