Lessons Learned the hard way

With this move Brent and I have learned a couple lessons the hard way.  There were some issues with not having things in writing when it came to the purchase of our house which ended up causing a lot of stress and costing us extra money.  You would have thought we would have learned to always get things in writing including quotes for work.  When we moved in here the house had no keys at all. So the only way to re-key the locks was to just put all new hardware on the doors.  That seemed fine to me since the doors all had brass knobs and I have been working at replacing them all to brushed nickle.  I called a "real" locksmith in Fort Dodge, since I didn't see any locksmiths listed in Algona.  They told me that the glass company here did lock smith work.  So I called them and they came right out.  The guy wrote down all the stuff we would need, I asked for a quote and he said he would get back to us.  LONG LONG LONG story short, we asked for quotes three times, never got one.  We went ahead and let them do the work, replacing 5 door knobs, 3 deadbolts and boring the hole and putting in 2 deadbolts.  Now, my dad is a carpenter and I have seen him do this work and I knew the guy doing it did not know what he was doing and that it was taking a ridiculously long time.  We recieved a bill for $984.00!!!!! They charged us for over 11 hours of labor and of course marked up the hardware which we could have purchased ourselves for under $200.  We aregued with the owner of Algona Glass, he wouldn't budge, insisting the work was "very labor intensive"  Our neighbor assured us they were just overcharging us because Brent is a doctor.  I know it's true.  We called several other locksmiths after we got the bill and they all nearly chocked when we told them our bill.  Their estimates were between $400 and $500.  It's a hard lesson to learn, people are dishonest, always get quotes and DO EVERYTHING yourself because you know there is a you tube video for everything.  The deadbolt they put on our front door looked so bad I went to lowes, bought new handle sets, they re keyed them in 3 seconds and my dad helped put them in.  The door looks great now!  

Nice black deadbolt the "locksmith" thought matched these door handles

New handle, So pretty! Thanks Dad!