Author: admin

“I got Airbnb in Kuching, i want the cheapest smart door lock below RM500 and yet good quality else i will purposely choose to call you at midnight”

As common-sense, we all should know that cheap and good wont happen at the same place. For this client, the only choice he has, is to sacrifice on size and component. Below RM500 is still do-able. If he minta cheap and good smart door lock below RM300 then we have to give up. We have locks below RM300, but there are too much “cost-cutting” and unstable quality.

By only changing the tubular lever parts of his lock, we can save the cost for mortise, extra steel body and also the key cylinder parts. So in practical sense, he got a good quality digital at cheap price by only changing the lever and maintaining other parts. This is the only option if he want Cheap and Good at the same place.

Today we went to this client who has a 10-years old Solity Hgang. Back motherboard damaged due to battery leak. Is repairable though. Other than that, no problem at all and still continue using..

I don’t think you can find any made in Korea smart door lock easily nowadays. There are many “Korea” brand smart door lock (which ironically actually tells you it is not “made” in Korea)

I have also encountered some fake company selling so-called made in Korea smart door lock in Kuching shopping mall (but actually made in china, because i’ve got a client with their problematic lock so i get to open it)

Personally i still think Korean made the best and most stable smart lock in the market, even with among all the top chinese brand such as Philips or Kaadas. 

The main, no.1 criteria in selecting a smart lock or any door lock, must compulsory always be, stability and durability. Because, what happen when your front door is, defective? You cannot enter your home. Get locked out of your own home is a very embarrassing situation.

Phone, computer, camera, can all be the latest and can suddenly damage, yes it will cause a quite an inconvenience but still okay. Front door lock yourself out at midnight? How super embarrassing and super inconvenience 100X times (calling help, calling locksmith, waiting, get a new lock, drilling new holes, etc).

So always go for stability and durability, rather than brand or latest gadget feature.

Repair Smart Door Lock? Cannot a boss. Change new la.

No brand and model of smart door lock is 100% perfect. Salesman will tell you everything good, and promise you everything in order to make the digital lock sales. But once the problem comes (if no more warranty), the no.1 feedback that we get from our customer, is they were asked to just change to a new smart door lock.

But with me, i love this investigation of broken parts. Figuring out what the problem is. And the satisfaction of resurrecting a lockset (or anything) is very satisfying. It takes time, and also less profit compared to sell a new lock, there is no such thing as measuring the fun of a hobby.

Now whether a lock is repairable or not, it all comes down the the availability of spare part. Famous brands usually no problem, plenty of spare part. Look for those international super famous brand (Samsung, Bosch, Philips, Lenovo) all this will have spare parts. Brand that you’ve never heard before, don’t. It will be a buy and throw smart door lock. Unless it’s super cheap and as cheap as dirt, then maybe you can get one to play and throw when it’s broken. Otherwise for longetivity, just get a lock from the brand that you’ve heard before.

For this customer, a developer’s office, that has around 50 staffs. The boss initially wanted a digital door lock for his glass door. But we advised against it.

Because we have done it before. But it’s a smaller office. 20 staffs. The digital door lock itself doesn’t give any problem actually. But the battery does. Majority digital door lock has a standard battery life of 1 year, given that in one day you close and open it for 10 times. But things are different for office. 20 staff go in and out, surely it’s more so much more than 10 times. Including customer, we estimate perhaps 50-100 times a days. 

Battery is drained in less than a month. And every month you have to change battery, this is unnecessary expenses. So for offices with more than 10, you should start consider against digital door lock. Use electromagnetic lock instead. Powered by the “unlimited” electricity. 

Electrical locks are a rather traditional lock, if installed properly, it will last very very long time. One thing for sure, much longer than digital door lock. So it’s highly recommended. The 2 cons of electrical locks are the visible wiring from the inside, and the dependency on electrical power. In blackout case, it will unlock. 

There is 1 thing about Samsung Digital Lock that other brand can’t beat.

The availability of spare parts. No other brand of digital door lock has this level of “repairability”. Whatever small small parts such as handle, some rubber parts, plastic parts, motherboard, reader, touchscreen, all are easily available. This makes Samsung digital door lock “durable”, not in the sense that it won’t give you any problem, but those problems are repairable/ service-able.

The toughest brand to service…is those brand-less digital door lock. You can’t see any brand label on the digital door lock (hence called brandless). Perhaps the seller can name it any brand even, since there is no logo or brand label. Cap ayam or cap banana brand. Usually no spare parts are available. So once broken considered “finished”

We high advise all who are interested in smart door lock, to at least get a branded digital door lock, instead of those cheap brand-less lock (which we also sell actually😅). If you really don’t wana allocated high budget on the lock, there are branded that are quite affordable such as Lenovo (made in Hong Kong). Locks are durable and spare parts are also easily available but no as much as Samsung. Other branded lock are the same case as well.

You don’t need to get tricked by some salesman that tries to persuade you to buy cheap lock (those are really cheap cost and hence high margin for them)

For as long as we can remember, Electromagnetic Lock (a.k.a EM lock) is the no.1 toughest lock to teach our client to use. We are super careful that for each different model, we laminated the user manual and keep it in our own filing, plus we use a scanner to scan it to keep a softcopy. This is how tough it is to remember even for us. 

You wana set a new pincode to unlock EM lock? You better remember 3 things:

1. What is the button sequence to press to go into setting mode (something like double *, then the master pincode, then ** or #

2. What is your master pincode? This is not the pincode to enter/ unlock. Master pincode is the pincode that can only do setting, but cannot enter the lock. If for one year you did not do any changes in setting, good luck remembering that pincode.

3. What is the special machine code for registering new pincode? It can be 8888, 666, 25, 2500. This is hard coded into the machine program so you have to memorise the number (or refer user manual). Wana delete pincode? That’s another numbercode. Wana add card? Another numbercode. Delete card? Another numbercode. Change admin code? Another numbercode.

So EM lock is one of the last last option that we super hate to recommend to our customer. Because we know the headache that it will bring to you (and us)

Everything changed with Smart version of EM lock.

Is like a Smart Door Lock in EM version. We can truly install and forget about you and never heard from you again in ages, till you need to get a new lock. Everything is done on phone app. 

Wana set new passcode? Open the apps and press the “Add/ change Pincode” button then type in or edit pincode, click “Save”. DONE.

Wana set or change card? Open add and press “Add/change Card” button. DONE

Fingerprint? Click the button. Done.

Can even see records of who came in at what time. Can even set a Time Attendance together into the keypad. 2-in-1 function!

For us, the EM Smart Door Lock is truly a game changer for consumer. For us. Em lock is a super traditional lock that have existed for a long time. It’s great to see it gets innovated. We now can gladly recommend EM lock for our office client. 

We sell this Kaadas K7 smart door lock few years back before MCO. Now it’s giving too many problem and is no longer cost effective to repair it. Kaadas is a good and experienced lock company. During that time this is the new push pull smart lock model and it looks solid so we started introduce it. We never expected that this is one of the batch with high defect rate.

For us, any digital door lock or smart door lock that we sell should by right last for at least 10 years. This model done less than that, only about 5. We feel so embarrassed and sorry for the customer because he put the trust in us. But we really cannot afford to give free repair (model and spare part no longer under production). We think of give a new free replacement smart lock, but that’s really too heavy on us.

So the best we can do, is sell a new lock from a more reputable brand, at our very cost price, not a single cent more. Also no labour charge at all. Hope the customer is happy with our solution. We earn nothing from this sales (actually loss labour fee and locksmith salary), but we hope we earned your happiness and satisfaction.

We’re a small small lock shop. Every client becomes our very friend and we exchanged trust. We’ve become like a community. Not sure if this is the best practise for a local business. But we feel comfortable and guilt-free doing business like this. And glad to say 70% of our clients are all referred by existing client. We know their friend, and their friend know us. And we also become friend☺️

This customer actually bought the smart door lock with super cheap price from shopee last year. But now it’s no longer working. We also did not attempt to repair as it’s super cheap, with 90% plastic parts, loose soldering and super cheap wiring used inside. It’s indeed cheap quality smart door lock.

But is it a mistake to buy such lock? The client has never used a smart door lock/ digital door lock in his life before. So this shopee purchase is the first smart lock he ever touched. It’s right to say that he don’t know what he want. Did he really need a smart lock? Will he really love using a smart lock?

In general, we agree that our life consist of various experimentation. We’re trying this, we’re trying that, checking if it suits us, checking if we liked it. And often times, this trial and error cost us some money (or time). But it’s a necessary thing to do in our life. We do this with our work life, with our love life, with our hobbies, and also with door lock.

Experimenting is wise, and i do personally encourage it. But with proper precautions. Don’t start the experiment with a costly lock or a big lock, as the damage and holes that it make to your door will be very irreversible. It’s too costly to damage your door for the experimenting. Get something small and easy to replace later.