The order of steps when nobody was there
Touch nothing before the police have seen it. On a walkway door at the Marina as much as on a villa leaf at Vaugrenier, the tool marks left on the frame are part of the record: a door already repaired makes that record impossible and weakens your file. The same goes for a forced gate on an estate at Les Plans, where marks on the ground and on the post count as much as those on the leaf.
Photograph from several angles before anything is touched: the outside face, the area around the lock, the splinters in the frame, the inside of the home. For a second home, note the date you last locked up as well — the insurer will want to place the period, and by then you will no longer remember.
Report it to the police, then declare the loss within the period set by your policy. Permanent repairs come afterwards. In between, a temporary securing closes the home without erasing what still has to be seen, which matters especially if you are leaving again the same evening.
Close up, then rebuild what actually gave way
In most cases seen here it is not the lock that failed but the timber around the striking plate, levered out. Fitting a new mechanism into a split frame repairs half the problem: the frame is made good, the keep reset, and only then is the lock refitted.
A lock that has been attacked is compromised even if the key still turns. Keep the parts removed — drilled cylinder, bent faceplate, pieces of frame: they show what kind of attack took place, and the insurer may ask to see them before opening the file. The same reasoning applies to the top keep of a multipoint lock, where a crowbar leaves play that is invisible from outside.
Then look at the ways in that get forgotten here: the cellar and the lock-up on the buried levels at the Marina, the side door of a Vaugrenier villa, the sliding window of a garden-level flat at Les Plans, the gate left ajar. If keys have gone, everything they commanded has to be dealt with, not only the front door. We walk round the property with you before the quote is drawn up, rather than treating only the door we came for.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our securing your home after a break-in page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Villeneuve-Loubet.