"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
. ..
Had a job booked in today, house divided into 3 flats. One of the tenants
has complained that another has stolen his mail, so the (remote) landlord
asked me to fit 3 exterior mailboxes.

The landlord obviously wanted each mailbox keyed individually, so he gave
me three Argos catalogue numbers for three entirely different mailboxes.

Didn't have time to get to Argos earlier & typically one box was
discontinued, one was out of stock & one had a changed part number.

Finally managed to sort this out & bought three mailboxes each completely
different from each other. Different price, shape, size, finish.

Having been caught out by Argos before, I unpacked each one in the van
before I drove away to check for missing bits.

Unbelievable. Any of the keys would open any mailbox.

Identity theft? Easy! If your chosen victim has an Argos mailbox. No
security whatsoever.

Are these people completely thick?

I suppose it rather depends on what they see the pupropse of the lock being.
A keyed-alike system will prevent access from the causal, curious passer-by,
which may be all they expect. It also has some stocking advantages to them
and would allow them to provide spare keys easily, were they minded to do
so. They should, however, advertise the boxes as keyed-alike.

In France, you have to have a mailbox on the perimeter of the property, so
even the ones you buy in a shed have a high-security lock.

Local security centre solved the problem. Three identical mailboxes all
with completely different keys.

I would have gone to a locksmith to start with.

Colin Bignell