Sentry Safe

It's a fairly common complaint for the safe to show signs of resistence when opening. My safe is the 59" E5251-T4. I just spoke with a Sentry customer service rep. He explained that I need to use white lithium grease on 3 locking pin areas to keep parts moving smoothly. I can buy this grease at AutoZone or a hardware store. I called Sentry because my safe's handle broke off. I am so pleased with Sentry's customer service! A very pleasant man explained how to open our safe after the handle breaks off. I know that the handle is meant to snap off if someone is trying to force it open. Someone in our family didn't realize this.

The customer service rep. took my name, phone #, serial #, model #, and address. He is sending me, at no cost, the spindle and parts with instructions. We spoke briefly about jobs and the economy since we are from different parts of the U.S. He said Sentry is going to expand, train and make more safes in this country (in the N.Y. area.) Good for them!

I read your article on Sentry Safes. I own one and my mother owns one. We both are having the same problem with our safes. They are getting more and more difficult to open. We are worried that we will be in the same position as your article states, in that we will be eventually locked out. Is there a recall on Sentry Safes? Thank you. Eventually the safe handle will break off or we will be locked out due to mechanism failure.

I have a Sentry Safe that has always been kept nicely in my home closet. It is not exposed to any damaging conditions nor moved to cause any damage. Lately, it is becoming more difficult to open the safe although I have the combination. Finally, it will not open. I tried to contact customer service with Sentry, and the only thing they had to tell me was that it was over a year old, so therefore out of warranty and that it was up to me to contact a locksmith to open it.

At this time, I am applying for a job and need the SS card or the birth certificate that are locked in this safe. Going on the internet to try to find help some other way other than the Sentry Company, I found an enormous amount of complaints very similar to mine; and no one was able to get any help from the company. these safes are expensive and sold too abundantly for this company to sell its reliability when it seems it can simply stop opening with the valuables of people hanging in limbo. This really needs to be investigated and why this company can sell a product that can potentially cause such distress with no responsibility from the company.