5 years ago it wasn’t possible to buy lock pick supplies in the UK unless you were a genuine trading locksmith. This has all changed now and there’s quite a few places in the UK selling pick sets, bump keys, mortice picks and other tools.
It’s astounding however how bad the bulk of these websites are, and the extortionate prices that they charge.
First up, North East Locksmith Supplies.The website looks bad enough that I certainly wouldn’t want to give them card details, and I’d be surprised if anything I paid for actually turned up. They sell the 32 piece Klom pick set for £32.99. Dealextreme have it for $32.49 (about £21). That’s a hell of a mark up.
<removed the following one by request and clear indication they have changed>
Next up, xxxxxxx. The website is marginally better but still looks dated and cheap. They sell this set of comb picks for £14.99, which is $11.13 at Dealextreme – or about £7.50. Worse still is the price of the bump keys themselves. 6 keys will cost you £35. These are blank keys, cut deeply on a cutting machine with the shoulder ground off – if you are making 10s of them it is a very quick process. That’s almost £6 a key!
But it gets worse – Walker Locksmiths. At least their website looks decent enough – but they are charging £85 + VAT for 8 bump keys. That’s £12.50 for a key!
Then we have uklockpickers.co.uk – another quick look round shows the rip off prices they charge for cheap imported pick sets.
LocksRUsUK.co.uk – would anyone part with their cash on a website that looks this bad? The only upside is that some of the kits are relatively good value.
Devon Locks seems to be the best of a bad bunch – they seem to have restricted themselves to more quality products.
North East Locksmith Supplies, uklockpickers.co.uk and LocksRUsUK.co.uk don’t even have an business address on their website. I bet it’s pretty much impossible returning anything to them.
I can imagine this will result in me being banned from a couple of forums, but anyway.
Jamie
March 26, 2014 at 12:21amVery good points. I’m finding exactly the same. Rip-off Britain. I’m now buying my lockpicks from
https://shop.multipick.com/de/oeffnungs–sperrwerkzeuge/lockpicking–schloss-manipulation/picksets–einzelpicks/picksets
They stock Peterson, which are hard to come by but very good.
I would be interested to know how you actually found the companies to be when buying from them? Or are your views just based on first impressions, as mine are?
Obviously some of the UK sites are just plain expensive – but I’d be interested to know if the crumby looking sites actually deliver the goods.
Personally, I’d pay the little bit more and go with the link I gave you.
At least you know you’re getting good stuff.
cybergibbons
March 26, 2014 at 1:59pmI’ve bought from a couple (Walkers, and one other, don’t recall) as they were the only place I could get some bits and pieces from. They took a lot longer to arrive than they said they would. Nothing much outside of this.
I’ve ordered from Multipick and a few US shops. It costs more, but I get nicer things…
Mark
August 20, 2014 at 2:18amSo the conclusion is that if you buy stuff in UK its expensive so your better off paying more and buying from outside the UK?
cybergibbons
September 20, 2014 at 9:48amIf you want to pay more than the going rate for poor quality Chinese stuff, the UK is the way forwards.
Otherwise buy good stuff from reputable overseas companies, or go to banggood/aliexpress/dealextreme etc.
stu
November 17, 2014 at 3:10pmWhere can you sell unwanted lock picking equipment..
ebay won’t allow it on there ?
any help would be great..
Cheers Stu
cybergibbons
November 21, 2014 at 12:05pmI’m not sure of anywhere – maybe try the lock picking subreddit?
chris
September 19, 2016 at 9:06pmHello
I’d like to think things have changed! I own UK Bump Keys – we’ve been going over 10 years now – maybe an update?
Pet3
August 24, 2017 at 6:16pmI’ve used UK bump keys a few times recently and they were OK. I got a set of bump keys and universal no1 and reverse were actually the same but other stuff was OK and came pretty fast.
Mark
October 18, 2017 at 9:36pmWalker locksmiths. Don’t try and return faulty goods. They will verbally abuse you and blame you for any faults
Ggy
June 13, 2018 at 7:21amOut dated information how wrong are you
cybergibbons
June 13, 2018 at 8:10amThe article is clearly dated from 8 years ago.
Maybe if you pointed out which site you had an issue with, then it could be corrected?