Bairnsdale Locksmiths

I wish to make a complaint about Tom, whom I believe is the owner of Paynesville Locksmith, 16 Wellington St, Paynesville, Vic. and Steve, who works for him at Bairnsdale Locksmith, 105 Main St, Bairnsdale, Vic.

On friday 24 March 2023, I rang Tom, from Paynesville Locksmiths about my caravan door not locking. In the afternoon, he told me that two men from Bairnsdale Locksmiths were coming, that they were part of his business.

So, Steve and Connor arrived, I asked Steve if he had worked on caravan doors before, he said he had. I pointed out to Steve that it looked to me like the inner and outer handles were out of alignment, which he ignored. So, he pulled the door handles apart, and spent about 45 mins to an hour trying to put it back together, and kept forcing the key to turn, and forcing the handles. I kept cautioning him to not break the key, he responded with ' I can cut a new one', and when I asked him not to force the handle, as they are expensive, he put less pressure on it.

To me, if a lock does not lock smoothly, it is pointless to force it, and was surprised that he kept doing it, instead of trying to work out why it wasn't locking. At some point, I believe Connor said something about the locks not aligning, which Steve also ignored.

So, after nearly an hour of Steve trying to force things, I said that maybe someone else should come out, where Steve got angry at me and said it wasn't his fault (!) I had asked him what the problem was, and he said 'well you've been been watching' I had indeed, all I saw him do was try to force the lock to work.

I rang Tom, who would not even hear my complaint, and said that Steve was professional and knew what he was doing. Steve's demeanour towards me after I said someone else might need to come out was less than professional. He then told Tom that he thought I would need new parts that he didn't have. At no time before I rang Tom did he stop and say this, he just kept trying to force the lock.

Why did I have to stop him? I was worried he was going to break the handle and key, and clearly he wasn't able to fix it. It certainly didn't look like Steve had worked on a caravan door before either.

I told Tom I was not happy with the service, that Steve kept forcing the lock and handles, Steve's attitude when I called Tom when it was clear they couldn't fix it, so after discussion with Tom I only paid the call-out fee. I was disgusted that Tom dismissed my complaint too.



I asked him Steve to put the door back as he found it, however, when they left, I found that he had not re-engaged the teeth properly, and the outer door handle did not open the door, so I had to pull it all apart again, and he had lost or taken one of the screws for the door handle as well. 



I spent the rest of that afternoon trying to fix that, but couldn't, and had to have all the door parts out, in order to close the door, so spent the night with a belt looped through the hole in the door where the handles go, tied to the cupboard door inside the caravan.



On saturday morning, 25th Mar 2023, I thought, this is ridiculous, it must be fixable. I thought again about my original idea that the inner/outer handles looked misaligned, and saw that the hole in the metal strip in the door did not align with the hole in the inner door piece, so I off-aligned the teeth of the metal piece with the teeth on the inner handle piece, so that the holes matched. (took me a lot of fiddling). Then, when I tried to attach the outer door handle, I realised that the two little plastic bits either side of where the bottom screw goes (on the inside) were stopping the handles from attaching. So, I cut those two little bits off.



But, I fixed it!! Without having to buy any new parts.

I sent Tom the video showing I had fixed it. He never responded.



I am extremely dissatisfied with my whole experience with Paynesville/Bairnsdale Locksmiths, in particular, Tom and Steve.



I asked for the CEO of MLAA to ring me, he rang m