Identity and Authority Verification Before Any Work

Purpose

Every opening, rekey, code cut, master key change and transponder write this shop performs must be authorized by someone who actually held the right to authorize it, and the shop must be able to prove that months later from the ticket alone. Identity and authority are two questions answered by two different documents, and the shops that collapse them into one ("he showed me a license") are the ones explaining to an insurer why they handed a working key to a person the record owner had already removed.

The failure is rarely a professional burglar. It is an ex-partner who still knows the layout, a roommate who moved out three weeks ago, an adult child clearing a house before the estate settles, or a buyer who has not closed yet. Each presents as an ordinary customer, and each is a claim against the bond.

Scope

Covers the gate that runs before any billable work at any address, in any vehicle, on any safe: what the office captures at intake, what the technician re-verifies on arrival, what stops the job, and what gets written down. It applies equally to a 3 a.m. lockout and to a scheduled commercial rekey.

Does not cover opening technique or pinning (see the residential lockout and rekey SOPs), and does not cover court-directed work: a writ-of-possession lockout arrives with a deputy on site and runs off the writ rather than off this procedure. A copy of a writ handed over by a landlord with no deputy present is not that job; it is an ordinary landlord job and takes the full gate below.

Roles and responsibilities

The handoff that matters is CSR to technician. The office verified a voice on a phone. The technician verifies a person at a door, and those can be different people. Nothing the CSR captured substitutes for the on-site check.

Procedure

Step 1: Assign the authority class before the truck rolls. The CSR records exactly one class on the ticket: occupant, record owner, owner's agent, vehicle possessor, or fiduciary (executor, trustee, receiver, property manager for a bank-held property). Each class has its own document list, and that list goes on the ticket so the caller can gather it before arrival. Acceptance: the ticket carries a class and a document list before dispatch. Wrong looks like a ticket that says only "customer locked out", which forces the technician to negotiate documents on a doorstep with a stressed caller. Stop rule: no class, no dispatch; the CSR calls back and asks the three questions (whose name is on the lease or deed, are you on it, what can you show me).

Step 2: Read the scene before you read the ID. Standing off from the door, look for forced entry: broken glass, a pried jamb, a door already off its latch, a vehicle with a punched lock. If any of that is present, or if the person meeting you is visibly impaired, threatening, or will not let you step back to your vehicle, you do not verify anything - return to the truck, leave the property, and call the local non-emergency police line from the road, then notify dispatch. Acceptance: you can describe the door's condition on the ticket. Wrong looks like a technician who starts picking a lock on a door whose sidelight is already broken out. Stop rule: leave first, explain later; a job you left is recoverable and an unlawful entry you assisted is not.

Step 3: Identify the person. Ask for an unexpired government photo ID and compare the photograph to the face in front of you, not to the name on the ticket. Record ID type, issuing state, expiry and the last four characters only; storing the full number gains nothing defensible and creates a breach exposure the shop has no reason to carry. Acceptance: photo matches, document unexpired, name recorded exactly as printed including middle initial. Wrong looks like an expired ID, a laminated photocopy, or a name differing from intake by more than a nickname. Stop rule: one mismatch moves you to the two-document path in step 4; a refusal to show any ID ends the job on the spot, politely and without argument.

Step 4: Prove the authority link, which the ID usually does not. Identity says who they are. Authority says this person may direct work on this door, this cylinder or this VIN, and it needs a document tying the identified person to the asset. Best case the address on the ID matches the service address and you are done. Otherwise take two of: a current lease naming that person, a utility or tax bill in that name at that address, a recorded deed, a title or current registration matching the VIN on the dash plate, or court letters for a fiduciary. Never accept a phone number the requester hands you for "the landlord" - look the owner or management company up independently and call the number you found. Acceptance: two independent documents, or one document plus an independently sourced callback logged with the time and who answered. Wrong looks like a lease with a name whited out, a screenshot of a text, or a bill more than one billing cycle old. Stop rule: fail this step and work does not start; offer the landlord-authorization route in step 5 and reschedule.

Step 5: Run second-channel confirmation on elevated jobs. Four job types get a callback even when the documents look clean: a rekey after a domestic dispute or separation, any master or restricted-key change on a commercial system, any safe opening, and any all-keys-lost automotive job. The callback goes to the authorized signer on file for a commercial system, to the record owner or management for a rental, to the titleholder for a vehicle whose possessor is not the titleholder. Acceptance: a logged call to a number you sourced yourself, with time, number, person reached and their stated authority. Wrong looks like "left a voicemail and proceeded". Stop rule: no live confirmation, no work on an elevated job - a voicemail is a message, not an authorization, and the second channel only works because the person in front of you cannot fake it.

Step 6: Scope the work to what the authority actually covers. Authority is rarely total. A tenant may authorize the unit door and not the mailbox, the storage cage or a common-area lock. A property manager may authorize a rekey and not removal of a restricted cylinder belonging to the building's master system. A vehicle possessor holding a registration but no title may authorize a duplicate and not an all-keys-lost erase-and-relearn that would kill keys the titleholder holds. Acceptance: the ticket lists each opening or cylinder by location and the customer initials that list before work starts. Wrong looks like "rekeyed the house" on a property where a second unit shares the keyway. Stop rule: anything outside the initialed list is a new job with a new verification, even with the pinning kit already in your hand.

Step 7: Deliver and count. Hand keys, codes or programmed remotes only to the person you verified, count them aloud, and record the count beside the customer signature. On a coded or restricted system, record which key stamps went out. Acceptance: keys delivered equals keys cut, signed for at that number. Wrong looks like a spare left in the door or a cut blank loose in the tray that walks out on the next job. Stop rule: if counts do not reconcile before you leave, do not close the ticket - search the vehicle and the work area, and if a cut key on a restricted or master system is genuinely missing, tell the owner the same day so those cylinders get re-pinned instead of discovered later.

The record this produces

One verification block on the work order, filled in on site, not from memory that evening:

• Authority class, and the document list it required
• ID type, issuing state, expiry, last four characters, name exactly as printed
• Each authority document by type and date, with a photo of the document page that carries the name and address
• Second-channel call: number, how you sourced it, time, person reached, what they authorized
• The initialed opening list, the key or code count delivered, and the customer signature
• Photographs: door and lock condition before work, work area after, and the ID held next to the completed work order so the two are provably from the same visit

It lands on the job record and stays for the retention period your insurer and state require; seven years is a reasonable default when nothing else drives it, because civil claims and license complaints both arrive long after the job feels finished. Readers later: the owner reconstructing a complaint, the insurer defending a claim, a licensing board, occasionally a subpoena. Write it so a stranger can follow it without calling you.

Worked pass: a tenant rekey where the authority link fails

Call at 09:40, caller states she is a tenant, wants the unit door and the deadbolt rekeyed after a roommate moved out. CSR assigns class "occupant", lists lease plus utility bill on the ticket, dispatches for 11:00.

Step 2 passes: door intact, no forced entry, the caller calm and willing to step back. Step 3 passes: unexpired state ID, photo matches, name recorded as printed, last four captured; the ID carries a previous address, which is common and not by itself a problem.

Step 4 fails. The lease she produces names the departed roommate as sole tenant and does not list her. The utility bill is in her name at the address, so she genuinely lives there, but living there is not authority to change the lock on someone else's tenancy. The technician does not start. He gives her the shop's line: the person on the lease or the owner has to authorize a lock change, and that same rule is what stops somebody changing the lock on her.

Step 5 route: he looks the property manager up from the county property record rather than calling the number the customer offered, reaches the manager at 11:22, and gets a verbal plus an emailed authorization for unit 4 only. The manager adds a condition - the unit sits on the building's grand master, so the new cylinders must be keyed into the existing system, which turns a simple rekey into a master-system job.

Step 6 narrows the scope in writing: unit 4 entry knob and unit 4 deadbolt, keyed to the existing master, mailbox and storage cage excluded. Step 7 delivers two change keys, counted aloud, signed for at 12:35.

Elapsed cost of the failure: about one hour of unbilled time on site plus a second trip once the coded cylinders were pulled from the system's stock. The alternative was rekeying a leaseholder out of his own unit on a stranger's word, which is a bond claim and a licensing complaint from a single job. One hour against that is not a close call, and the emailed authorization is the artifact that makes the file defensible.

References

• ALOA Security Professionals Association code of ethics, which states the trade's standing rule that a locksmith opens only for a person with authority over the opening; this SOP is that rule turned into a checkable procedure
• State locksmith licensing and bonding requirements, which in licensing states (California, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina and others) condition the license on exactly this kind of record; confirm your own state's record and retention rules, which vary
• See related: Residential Lockout Service SOP (opening technique once authority is settled), Rekey and Lock Change SOP, Safe Opening Authorization and Procedure SOP, Automotive Key Programming Standard SOP