We attended a callout to an emergency lockout in Fairfield this week. The cause? A dodgy keyring with too many keys on it. Our new client had come home after being out all day, pulled out his keys to open the front door only to realise he was missing several keys off his key ring. He couldn’t work out how the keys had come to be missing till we quizzed him about his key ring. This is how we think it happened.
His key ring was made up of several rings joined together and one of the rings was made out of poor quality metal, allowing it to become bent out of shape. He had been at the supermarket and getting his keys out of his pocket, he had accidentally pulled some change out of his pocket at the same time.
He retrieved the change but we think the sound of the change hitting the ground disguised the sound of his house key falling of the dodgy key ring. Either way? The house key was gone, and it was his only one.
Our advice? Check out your key ring. Do you have many rings joined together? Are any of them misshapen, or made of soft metal? These are a lockout waiting to happen. Keyrings are cheap and can save you money.
Some tips.
- Try and limit the number of keys you carry on your keyring. The more keys you have, the more rings you’ll need, the more chance something will go wrong.
- If you ever get a new key for some reason of another, and that key comes on a thin, soft metal easily bent wire ring? The ring is NOT a key ring its just a display ring. You don’t want to trust your keys with it. Take the key off this small ring, throw it away and put your key on a proper, larger key ring.
- The old style, metal key rings are great… but there are new options on the market. Twisty style keyrings that are almost impossible to damage or open accidentally, whilst being much easier to open than a normal keyring when you want to add or remove keys.
- Don’t try and cut down on the amount of keys on your key ring by placing them in your wallet. Wallets get lost, a key in a wallet is an invitation for a burglar to come and
- Rob you whilst you are out.
- Come and collect your NEW credit cards and pin numbers from your letterbox whilst you are at work – the ones you reported stolen and are now trying to get replaced.
Follow Up
We got a call back from this client to say he had gone back to the shopping center in Fairfield where he thought he had dropped his key and had found is lying on the ground right near where he had parked. As we had suspected…. it was a dodgy stretched wire loop masqeurading as a keyring. Wire loops. Are not key rings!
