Have you ever been locked out of your hotel room in a strange country? Has it ever cost you 1,924.53 Australian Dollars (about $1500USD) to get back in? No? Well here’s how easy it can happen to you. Wanting a little more space than the usual squirmy hotel room, we booked an apartment on our recent trip to Paris. The place was a roomy but older style apartment in The Marais, known as the centre of the Jewish area and more recently, a gay hangout. The owner of the apartment lived next door and provided us with one key but no key ring, so we used to store it in the back of the lock when inside. After several days of getting into the door locking routine, we found ourselves one day outside the room with the door closed and the key in the back of the lock. Panic? No. This is just a simple matter of getting the owner’s key and letting ourselves in. The owner showed up around 4:30pm and immediately tried the lock – oops. A little sinking feeling as we realised that the key in the back of the door was stopping the other key from opening the door. No matter, the owner already had an old Xray sheet just for opening doors in this situation (I did wonder why). The idea was to slide the Xray sheet between the door and the jam and force the closed (but not locked) door to open, just like people tell you it can be done with a credit card. For some reason this was turning into a pointless exercise. Trying to be optimistic, we agreed that we should call a locksmith who with all their strange powers of persuasion will talk nicely to the door and we will get in. This was going to cost us €70. OK yeah go ahead, what’s €70 for a simple mistake? An hour later, the tired looking locksmith arrived. He spoke no English, I spoke very, very little French and the owner spoke smatterings of English. We would be fine. He starts the old Xray thing only a lot more vigorously than our feeble attempts. The lock was being obstinate. My smile was drooping minute by minute as it started to dawn on me that we were in a lot of shit now. Some more half hearted attempts by the locksmith to pretend to find alternate methods of getting into the apartment (windows etc) and before I knew it, the angle grinder was in business. Sparks flying everywhere and my emotions running a bit wild. What was this going to cost? Can’t be that bad can it? We finally burst into the flat amidst cheers from the owner and her son (who had been just getting in the way by trying to help). The friendly little cherub happily pointed out to me, once inside, that the reason the Xray thingy didn’t work was because the latch was not recessed into the jam – big smiles – he had worked it out! This was great news for someone but not me at this stage. Now to the serious end of the business: the locksmith would need some money to get a new lock and to come back and install it. I watched as he started to write out the bill. I could clearly see him write the 98 bit for the lock but when he added a small 6 on the end I just fell to the floor. 986 euros for a lock? What are talking about here – Fort Knox? I had agreed that I would pay so I vainly offered my credit card. Oh so you don’t take Visa? My head was spinning – Why was it so much and how was I going to get this amount of cash at 6:30 at night? Paris is full of ATM’s which are just like all others – they will pay out only so much within a 24 hour period – so we came to an agreement to pay €500 now and €650 in the morning. I didn’t realise that “the morning” wasn’t 24 hours later but we will come to that. He installed the lock and we retreated into the apartment like beaten dogs into a kennel. Oh my God, what happened? We didn’t sleep a moment: through the fog of emotion and anger, it dawned on me that this job would have only cost me €70 if the old lock had been installed correctly! So it wasn’t my fault after all! But I had already agreed to pay and the poor locksmith was the joker in the middle. Do we just get up and run away? I knew the locksmith wouldn’t be paid. OK so we pay the rest and then do the arguing. There are times in your life where you know you are making a mistake but you cannot do anything about it. This was one of them. I knew at that point I was not going to see that money again. In the morning I had to go to a Money Changer to get the rest of the money (remember the 24 hour thing) – so just for good luck he charged me 7% to get the money out. Go ahead, why not kick me when I’m down? We paid and then, via agents, started negotiating with the owner. Well we sort of started and then finished because they refused to acknowledge that the problem was theirs and refused my generous offer of a cost split. I can’t say in this story what I felt like doing but you can imagine. When we started looking closely around the flat, we realised that everything in the place had been repaired by Uncle Heime – all patchy and lost of cover ups. Funny how you don’t notice these things at first isn’t it? I suspect the lock was a job done by the son himself. On the day we were leaving, I mentioned to the owner that this could happen again very easily because the cause of the problem had not be addressed. With a Gallic “humph” (the equivalent of the “What to do” in India) she just slunk back into her flat. I know this just sounds like another Paris disaster travel story (and there are a few of these) but I write to warn other suckers who might possibly think of staying at 26 Rue des Rosiers to think again. Be careful, there is more than one apartment at 26 Rue des Rosiers (because none of them are numbered).
Sunday
Lockedup up in Paris
Have you ever been locked out of your hotel room in a strange country? Has it ever cost you 1,924.53 Australian Dollars (about $1500USD) to get back in? No? Well here’s how easy it can happen to you. Wanting a little more space than the usual squirmy hotel room, we booked an apartment on our recent trip to Paris. The place was a roomy but older style apartment in The Marais, known as the centre of the Jewish area and more recently, a gay hangout. The owner of the apartment lived next door and provided us with one key but no key ring, so we used to store it in the back of the lock when inside. After several days of getting into the door locking routine, we found ourselves one day outside the room with the door closed and the key in the back of the lock. Panic? No. This is just a simple matter of getting the owner’s key and letting ourselves in. The owner showed up around 4:30pm and immediately tried the lock – oops. A little sinking feeling as we realised that the key in the back of the door was stopping the other key from opening the door. No matter, the owner already had an old Xray sheet just for opening doors in this situation (I did wonder why). The idea was to slide the Xray sheet between the door and the jam and force the closed (but not locked) door to open, just like people tell you it can be done with a credit card. For some reason this was turning into a pointless exercise. Trying to be optimistic, we agreed that we should call a locksmith who with all their strange powers of persuasion will talk nicely to the door and we will get in. This was going to cost us €70. OK yeah go ahead, what’s €70 for a simple mistake? An hour later, the tired looking locksmith arrived. He spoke no English, I spoke very, very little French and the owner spoke smatterings of English. We would be fine. He starts the old Xray thing only a lot more vigorously than our feeble attempts. The lock was being obstinate. My smile was drooping minute by minute as it started to dawn on me that we were in a lot of shit now. Some more half hearted attempts by the locksmith to pretend to find alternate methods of getting into the apartment (windows etc) and before I knew it, the angle grinder was in business. Sparks flying everywhere and my emotions running a bit wild. What was this going to cost? Can’t be that bad can it? We finally burst into the flat amidst cheers from the owner and her son (who had been just getting in the way by trying to help). The friendly little cherub happily pointed out to me, once inside, that the reason the Xray thingy didn’t work was because the latch was not recessed into the jam – big smiles – he had worked it out! This was great news for someone but not me at this stage. Now to the serious end of the business: the locksmith would need some money to get a new lock and to come back and install it. I watched as he started to write out the bill. I could clearly see him write the 98 bit for the lock but when he added a small 6 on the end I just fell to the floor. 986 euros for a lock? What are talking about here – Fort Knox? I had agreed that I would pay so I vainly offered my credit card. Oh so you don’t take Visa? My head was spinning – Why was it so much and how was I going to get this amount of cash at 6:30 at night? Paris is full of ATM’s which are just like all others – they will pay out only so much within a 24 hour period – so we came to an agreement to pay €500 now and €650 in the morning. I didn’t realise that “the morning” wasn’t 24 hours later but we will come to that. He installed the lock and we retreated into the apartment like beaten dogs into a kennel. Oh my God, what happened? We didn’t sleep a moment: through the fog of emotion and anger, it dawned on me that this job would have only cost me €70 if the old lock had been installed correctly! So it wasn’t my fault after all! But I had already agreed to pay and the poor locksmith was the joker in the middle. Do we just get up and run away? I knew the locksmith wouldn’t be paid. OK so we pay the rest and then do the arguing. There are times in your life where you know you are making a mistake but you cannot do anything about it. This was one of them. I knew at that point I was not going to see that money again. In the morning I had to go to a Money Changer to get the rest of the money (remember the 24 hour thing) – so just for good luck he charged me 7% to get the money out. Go ahead, why not kick me when I’m down? We paid and then, via agents, started negotiating with the owner. Well we sort of started and then finished because they refused to acknowledge that the problem was theirs and refused my generous offer of a cost split. I can’t say in this story what I felt like doing but you can imagine. When we started looking closely around the flat, we realised that everything in the place had been repaired by Uncle Heime – all patchy and lost of cover ups. Funny how you don’t notice these things at first isn’t it? I suspect the lock was a job done by the son himself. On the day we were leaving, I mentioned to the owner that this could happen again very easily because the cause of the problem had not be addressed. With a Gallic “humph” (the equivalent of the “What to do” in India) she just slunk back into her flat. I know this just sounds like another Paris disaster travel story (and there are a few of these) but I write to warn other suckers who might possibly think of staying at 26 Rue des Rosiers to think again. Be careful, there is more than one apartment at 26 Rue des Rosiers (because none of them are numbered).
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1 comment:
Very interesting story. Hiring a good locksmith is never cheap. But hiring a dishonest or incompetent one is always expensive. The fees you will be charged depend on a variety of factors. Few month ago I locked myself out of my apartment. I knew that I had to do something about this problem. I called to locksmith company and within 30 minutes time, the locksmith arrived. He was a tall and fair guy. He brought along all his gears from lightweight to heavyweight. He checked my documents and opened the door.
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