About
The door that locked all winter quits in August.
Most Danville calls come down to one habit of the valley: a Greenbrook front door closes cleanly from November to May, then the heat swells the frame and the bolt stops finding its hole. The rest is a side gate whose strike has drifted, a fob a community gate no longer answers, or a Hartz Avenue shop door that will not catch. Shims, a chisel, cylinder stock and a key machine are on board, so the frame is trued at the same visit as the lock, at any hour.
4.9 / 5· 167 reviews from Danville and the San Ramon Valley
2020
In the valley since
24/7
Calls taken, holidays too
90 days
On the labor
Jamb first, then the lock
Sixteen summers in this valley taught me to look at the jamb before the lock. When an entry stops locking in August, the wood has usually moved and the cylinder is fine, and I would be selling you the wrong part if I started with hardware.
The shims, the deeper strike and the eased leaf are my work like any other, so each carries the full ninety days on the receipt.
Grant Pemberton
Owner · 16 years in the San Ramon Valley · with Magee since 2020
Who the 925 number reaches, and since when
Magee Lock Co. has worked Danville and the San Ramon Valley since 2020, out of a van with the bench bolted into it rather than a room with a counter and posted hours. The name is borrowed from Magee Ranch at the southern edge of town, where the last street gives up and the grass hills start climbing, and the working base sits by the old center off Hartz Avenue, which is where every minute quoted on this site is measured from. Grant Pemberton is the lead technician and takes most of the calls himself, with sixteen years on valley doors behind him — a good deal longer than the company has existed, which is the usual order of these things: the trade first, the name on the door afterward.
It is worth saying out loud what this is not. No franchise agreement, no dealership, no loyalty owed to a lock maker or a car brand, and no arrangement where your address gets handed along to whichever van bids for it. One number rings here, it is picked up at three in the morning and on Thanksgiving, and the technician who knocks is paid by the business printed across the top of your receipt.
Shelves loaded for doors that grow in July
This town sits behind the ridge from the bay, so a July afternoon can push past a hundred while a January night settles near forty, and the entries take that harder than anything else in the house. Danville went up mostly between the 1970s and the early 2000s, which means wide solid leaves hung on three hinges, very often with a narrow glass sidelight alongside, heavy enough to sag under their own weight before the weather contributes a thing. Over a season the leaf and the jamb travel and the strike plate stays exactly where somebody screwed it, so the bolt quits passing through the hole and starts wearing a bright mark into brass. What comes down the phone as a broken lock is, most weeks, a box that has walked out of line.
Which is why the front shelf on board holds carpentry rather than cylinders: hinge shims, three-inch screws long enough to bite framing, long strikes, jamb reinforcement, spare plates in several finishes so a relocated strike does not read as a scar on the paint. Behind that ride deadbolts and handlesets sized for wide entries, narrow-stile hardware for a leaf with a sidelight beside it, keypad locks with their override blanks and the machine to cut them, aluminum deadlatches, hookbolts and closer parts for the shopfronts downtown, community remotes for the gated streets out east, and blanks and programmers for most of what stands in the driveways here. A chisel riding next to the cylinder stock is the whole reason the frame gets put right on the visit you already paid for instead of on a second one.
The Frame Gets Looked At First
Four rules that behave the same on a Greenbrook tract house, a wide entry off Sycamore Valley Road, a gate fob in Blackhawk and a glass shop door on Hartz Avenue. Labor carries ninety days, written on the receipt where you can read it.
- Greenbrook — a flat tract of a few repeating floor plans with two-car garages
- the 1970s
- Danville Station — streets laid along the old rail branch that carries the Iron Horse Trail today
- the 1980s
- Sycamore Valley, Magee Ranch, Crow Canyon Country Club and Blackhawk — bigger lots, longer driveways, gated entrances
- the 1990s onward
From what you say about the door to the card reader
Your figure is settled while you are still holding the phone. It comes off the published ranges, the $89 service call is folded inside it rather than waiting underneath the total, and the clock is counted in the same breath: an arrival from 8pm to midnight adds $55, and one from midnight to 7am adds $95. Weekends and holidays change nothing. Master key systems and access control are the single exception, because a door count guessed over the phone turns into an argument later — those get walked, listed and put in writing before a number is spoken. What is described as a stuck door, a spinning key or a bolt that needs a shoulder is enough to close the range down to one figure, and that figure is what the card sees.
Once it is booked, a text carries the technician name and a window drawn from wherever the van is standing, with the gate call-in allowed for when there is one: Downtown Danville runs about 12 minutes, Blackhawk about 26, and 19 is the average across the eight neighborhoods lying between them. Alamo, San Ramon, Diablo, Walnut Creek, Dublin and Pleasanton are worked at the same prices and honest longer waits, 15 through 29. At the address, photo ID goes against the door or a registration against the plate before a case is opened. Then hinges, leaf, stop and strike come back into line, hardware goes on after that and gets tried by your own hand, and you tap a card where you stand. The itemized receipt reaches your inbox, and the ninety days on the labor are printed on it.
The sentences that end a call without a sale
A deadbolt that refuses to throw has usually lost its alignment rather than its insides, and saying so out loud turns a hardware sale into a plate moved a quarter inch and two long screws driven into a stud. A house carrying five mismatched keys wants one rekey at $31 to $49 a cylinder, not five new locks, and every cylinder after the first sits at the low end because the van is already at your curb. A keypad bought for a door built in 1988 will fit the hole it was sold for; whether the leaf can carry a motor is the question worth settling first, and when the answer is no you hear it before the box is opened rather than a month after it is mounted.
Other jobs get turned down while you are still on the call. Garage door springs, cables, panels and opener motors belong to a different trade, and they get named as such instead of guessed at from a driveway. On anything shared — an entry gate, a pool door, a mail enclosure — the association or its management company is the party entitled to order work, not the resident who happens to be standing beside it, and that gets asked before a van moves rather than after it arrives. Naming the limit costs the invoice sitting on the table and keeps the reason people call back once the season turns again.
Where we work
Danville and the San Ramon Valley, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
What people ask about the van itself
Am I calling Magee Lock Co. itself, or a desk that resells the address?+
The business itself, and Danville is where it lives. The number on this site rings here, the person dispatched is paid here, and nothing is auctioned on to a third van. The distinction earns its keep because a fair share of what sits above the map results is a booking desk, often in another state: it takes the address, keeps a margin and hands the job to whoever answers first, which is exactly why the number said on the phone and the number demanded on the porch so rarely agree.
How long has this van been working Danville?+
Since 2020 under this name, on the same list of work the whole way through: openings, rekeys, strike and hinge repair, gate remotes, storefront hardware downtown and car keys in the driveways. Grant Pemberton, who runs the calls, has sixteen years on San Ramon Valley doors, which is long enough to have watched the same entries go tight in August and loose again in February and to name the fix before the van pulls up. Knowing which of the two you are looking at before the van leaves the curb is most of what those years buy the person who called.
There is no address on Hartz Avenue to walk into. Why not?+
Because the thing that stopped working is bolted to a door and a jamb, and neither of those is going to drive anywhere. A storefront would buy rent, posted hours and a trip across town at the worst moment of your day, and it would buy you nothing. The van stages near the old center instead and moves toward whoever called, so the citywide average is 19 minutes. Key cutting, pinning, cylinder work and fob programming all happen at your curb off the bench on board, inside the same visit that started the call.
Who knocks, and how do I know it is the right person?+
Somebody whose name reached you before he did. The text sent at dispatch carries the technician name and the arrival window, and holding that text against the person standing in front of you is the cheapest safety check this trade offers. If the two do not line up, you owe nobody an explanation — send them off and call the number back. Expect the check to run the other way too: ID against the address, or a registration against the plate, before any tool touches anything.
Suppose the cylinder will not give without a drill?+
You hear about it before that decision is made. House deadbolts, gate latches, patio sliders, storefront hardware and car doors nearly always open non-destructively and keep working afterward, which is the point of picks, decoders and bypass tools coming out ahead of anything else. When a cylinder is seized, already broken inside or high-security to the point where picking fails, the work stops and you are told what drilling costs the hardware, what the replacement runs and what else could be tried, and then you decide. The figure agreed on the call covers that conversation whichever way it goes.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Tell us whether the door has to be pushed before it locks, and the call is short
Danville and the San Ramon Valley, at any hour. The condition of the door sets the work and the work sets the price, so you get one number on the phone with the $89 service call and the hour already inside it, and that number is what the receipt shows. Ninety days on the labor, in writing, covering the frame as well as the lock.