Seriously, if I read one more one star review on amazon regarding a person who broke a key off in their lock, I'm going to lose it. Read the instructions. It will tell you that a lock should never, ever be forced. I have two locks with tight tolerances. They have to be fully seated before you turn the key, but when they are fully seated, they turn like butter. One of them even spent a whole year outside rain or shine and works beautifully, still.

If you feel any resistance in a lock, release the death grip on the key and reseat the shackle before attempting to turn it again. This will keep you from having to hack through a tough lock because you hamfisted a key in half.

And when you do figure out how to operate that lock... don't lock my bike up with yours!

Seriously this happened today. Someone wrapped their cable around their bike and my front brake cable... *sigh* (I was able to fiddle with the cable and get it out of the lever)

That's why they still makes combo lock.

My only problem with combo locks are when the numbers evaporate as the lock gets older. It's hard to get the combination when there's not a number left.

Sharpie or Dremel?

That should have given you a perfect excuse to cut their cable... and... why not... take the bike

You can write the numbers on there. And the best part is, you only have to write the numbers that you actually use, why bother with all of them

That happened to me once. I was on my way to a dentist appointment and someone new had locked their bike to mine with a U-Lock. Anyway I left a nice note for the new rider. And met a nice person the next day with two "free coffee" cards in hand. And still made it to my appointment with a cab pass from work.