Help desk · read the first two minutes before touching anything
Your safe will not open
Almost every lockout is one of six things, and four of them you can fix yourself in under ten minutes. The other two need a technician, and trying anyway makes them cost more. Start by naming the symptom.
Three things not to do, ever
Do not drill. Do not hit the door, the dial or the keypad — a dial that is struck can fire the relocker and turn a €200 job into a €600 one. Do not pour anything into the lock. Nothing on this site will teach you to defeat a lock; this page is about finding out what is wrong and who fixes it.
Pick what is happening
Keypad is dead, beeping, or refuses the code
Electronic locks · batteries, penalty lockout, worn keys
Dial spins, numbers don't work
Mechanical locks · dialling sequence, overshooting, drift
Code accepted, handle won't turn
Boltwork · overpacking, pressure, alignment
Something was drilled, hit or pried — now nothing works
Relocker fired · technician only
I don't know the combination
Inherited safe, bought a house, lost the paperwork
I need a technician
What it costs, what to ask, what to have ready
What actually goes wrong, in order of frequency
From the failure modes documented by lock makers and by the people who open these things for a living:
| Cause | Signs | Who fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Flat battery | No sound, weak sound, long beeps, code accepted but bolts don't move | you, in five minutes |
| Penalty lockout | Keypad beeps but ignores input, or looks dead, after wrong codes | you — by waiting |
| Dialling error | Mechanical dial, correct numbers, nothing happens | you, by re-dialling properly |
| Boltwork under load | Code accepted, handle stiff or immovable | you, usually |
| Worn or broken lock | Intermittent for weeks, then never | technician |
| Relocker fired | Follows a drill, a blow, a pry attempt, or a lock failure | technician, by drilling to a known point |
Note the shape of that list: the cheap causes are the common ones. The expensive causes are rare — unless someone forces the door first.
Why this page exists
This trade sells you a container and then leaves you alone with it. Manuals live on
manufacturers' servers, on Scribd, on random mirrors; combinations are printed on the last page
of a booklet nobody kept. When the door will not open, people search in a panic and land on a
forum thread from 2011. This section is the answer we wanted to find.