Locksmiths in Morocco, vetted and on call

The most common bad experience with locksmiths in Morocco is not a broken door. It is a price that triples between the phone call and the invoice, agreed with someone standing outside your flat at eleven at night.

Get three things on the phone, before anyone is dispatched:

• The call-out fee, and whether it is deducted from the job if you go ahead.
• A price range for your specific situation — a slammed door and a deadlocked door are completely different jobs.
• Whether a night, weekend or public-holiday surcharge applies, and how much.

If someone will not give you a range on the phone, that is the answer. A competent locksmith can quote a band from a description; only the exact figure needs the door in front of them.

The second rule: a slammed door should almost never be drilled. If the door merely closed behind you and the deadbolt is not thrown, it opens without destroying the lock. A locksmith who reaches for a drill on a slammed door is either unskilled or selling you a replacement cylinder you did not need. Ask, before they start, whether they intend to open it non-destructively.

Opening a slammed, unlocked door: 150 to 400 MAD. Opening a genuinely locked door, or one whose key is lost: 300 to 700 MAD. A reinforced or armoured door is a different job again, 400 to 1,500 MAD, and it takes longer.

Changing the cylinder — the barrel the key goes into — is the routine security job and it is cheap: 180 to 500 MAD for a standard one, fitted. That is what you want after losing a key or moving into a new place, and it is far cheaper than replacing the whole lock.

A high-security cylinder with a registered key card costs 400 to 1,500 MAD, and it is the upgrade actually worth paying for. The card means copies of your key cannot be cut without it. For a flat you have just moved into, where you have no idea how many keys exist, it solves the real problem.

Night surcharges are legitimate — 300 to 900 MAD on top — and they should be stated on the phone, not discovered at the end.

If you have just rented or bought in Morocco, assume that copies of your key exist. Previous tenants, an agency, a caretaker, a cleaner from two tenancies ago. This is not paranoia; it is how keys work everywhere.

The fix is a cylinder change, not a new door and not a new lock body. 180 to 500 MAD for a standard cylinder, or 400 to 1,500 MAD for a high-security one with a key card that prevents uncontrolled copying. Doing it in the first week costs less than any alternative and settles the question permanently.

For a villa or a riad, the same logic extends to the gate and any secondary entrance. Gate motor repair and installation runs 800 to 4,000 MAD and is worth scoping in the same visit rather than as a separate emergency later.

Two things, in order. File the police report first — insurers require it, and altering the door before it is documented complicates a claim. Then secure the door.

What "secure" means depends on how the door failed. If the lock was picked or bumped, a high-security cylinder is the answer. If the door frame gave way, a new cylinder achieves nothing — the weak point is the frame, and door reinforcement is the real fix, at 3,500 to 12,000 MAD depending on the door and the city.

Ask the locksmith to tell you which of the two happened. A good one will show you. A door reinforcement quoted without an explanation of how the door was actually breached is a sale, not a diagnosis.