My experience doing third party work needing spares was pretty much the same Gary, but then I was a total ‘outsider’!
Spanish Inquisition spread over 2 weeks to buy two M2b’s, keyed to differ, two 15cm keys each, and the price was eye watering, about £300+ vat each, and this was back in the late nineties.
The last time I dealt with them was years later (but still a long time ago)for their super duper key lock- was it the M3i or M3b back then, cant remember exactly.
On the phone I was told clearly I couldn’t have one- not at any price, as I wasn’t an FBH registered contractor and was outside their network.
He then asked me how much experience I had of working on their stuff and I told him, he then starts thinking about it, ummed and ahhed for about five mins and then said they were actually stuck for a network engineer to cover our area, and would I be interested in taking it on….but I still couldn’t buy the lock!!
Never dealt with them again after that. That famous fast food chain had some fichet stuff but luckily all the ones I saw for SMP in my area had their own graded dual units, so thankfully never had to suffer the FBH pantomime’s again.
