Photo by Alex Nelson.
See Update below (11/27/2010):
Every school year, my kids come to me and ask for school locks. I inevitably buy more locks because I forgot to save the combinations. This year the whole idea of buying new locks just irked me when I was staring at 5 perfectly good locks that I could not open. I even put the locks up to my ear trying to hear the tumblers as I went left, right, left. Who was I kidding? A lock picker, I am not.
Figuring Master Lock must have some way to re-discover your lock combination, I was pleasantly surprised to see a section on how to recover your old lock combination by simply filling out an affidavit and providing copies of the back of your locks. You can request up to 6 lock combination. More than that, contact the Company.
Believe me. Xeroxing the back of the locks has not been an easy feat. Still working on it. Note, you can only find out your combination for locks that have serial numbers on the back.
According to the website, Master Lock no longer uses serial numbers for security purposes. So, how do you recover those numbers? Master Lock provides a free website, Combo Locker, to register up to five of your locks. Have more locks? I suspect you could get a spouse or a friend to register so that you can record more lock combinations.
So the moral of the story? Don’t throw those locks away. Give them a second life by finding out their lock combinations and then recording them safely in Combo Locker. You will be practicing your 3 Rs: record, relock, and then relax!
Update: Master Lock now has a new Vault system where you can put all your valuable information including your lock combinations. You can upgrade from your Combo lock system.
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