Mr. LOCKSMITH

I have encountered several locksmiths that operate with questionable ethical standards in silver spring area. They largely prey on desperate people who manage to lock themselves out of their apartments and will pay just about anything for an "emergency" locksmith to get them out of a jam.  In fact there are probably a dozen of them called "A1 Locksmith" or even "AA Locksmith" hoping to be the first entry in the phone book. Mr. Locksmith is an entirely different kind of operation. I have dealt with them on a couple of occasions now, and I have come away quite impressed.  Leo, who I presume is the owner / manager as he always answers the phone, is an honest, straightforward guy. I called him last week because the lock on our building's front door wasn't holding. I explained that I didn't really want to pay much to fix it because we have brand new doors on order that will be arriving in a few weeks, and the new doors come with new locks. So, whatever I paid to fix the short-term problem would be money wasted in the long run. He said not to worry and he offered to send a guy (Ron) to my building the next day, free of charge, to assess the situation.  He said if I didn't want to pay for any work, that was fine, but he would at least outline a few options. In fact he did, and ultimately recommended that we replace the broken lock with a new one. he suggested we by a cheap version that would last several months until the new doors arrived but not necessarily much beyond that.  Including installation, he priced the whole job at $225, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me.   Great, honest work from a good local locksmith is worth 5 stars every day of the week. Thanks, Leo!

Ron was terrific. I sent an email late night re needing a lock replaced. Ron called me first thing the next morning, asked for additional information, and showed up on time an hour later. He was professional, efficient, and good-humored about all of our questions.