GE Electronic Lock “I” Box…How to Ruin a Beautiful Sunday Open House In Maple Grove
June 7th, 2008 Categories: Maple Grove Stuff, My Listings, Real Estate News
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I was just about to go show houses in Savage when one of my co-agents called to say he couldn’t get into the lock box at the open house he was doing for me in Maple Grove. I told him I’d be right there and when I arrived with my “key”, which is my Treo phone, it wouldn’t open it either.
Turns out, we had a total of three showings that day and two had already come and gone without getting in to see the property. We had another showing scheduled for that evening, too!
My co-worker was kind enough to wait for the homeowner (who we called) to get another key and stay later than the scheduled open to show the other Realtor who was coming. He’s a sweetie!
The $80 GE Supra “I” Box was as dead as a doornail. I checked on my computer at home and it claimed on the website that it had an 88% battery life. OK. So what, then, was the problem?
When I called the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors on Monday, they said that I would have to go get a pair of bolt cutters and cut the thing off of the door knob. It was probably a case of the infrared thingamajiggy crapping out. Well isn’t that special!
So off I went to rent a pair of bolt cutters to the tune of $23 at the Highway 55 Rental in Medina. I got over to my client’s house and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that I personally wasn’t going to be able to use this thing. It was big and heavy and the shackle was quite thick so not a lot of leverage for the bolt cutter to get around it with the door knob in the way.
I waited until my hubby got home from work and he had to take the whole door knob off and cut it off that way. The next day I had to treck down to Edina to the Association to return the damaged lock box and to pick up a new one. They also had to go down into the secret lock box operating room where a nice young man took a drill and drilled the bottom of it to get the key out.
Do I have time for this? No! But, I guess it’s all part of my job of selling houses. I take the good with the bad.
