Walk into any store with a key-copying vending machine and, hey, new key. But none of those machines are equipped to cut Medeco keys, partly because it's a little more expensive to make a machine the measures and cuts them, and partly because of IP.
The idea with Medeco is that you give one of these to your AirBNB guests or a building maintenance worker or something, and if you get your keys back, you can be reasonably confident that they didn't make any copies. You can't be 100% sure, of course, but the average mall machine or even locksmith probably can't help them.
An authorized Medeco agent will want documentation that you have the right to have a key made (you're the owner and not a renter), and they will of course happily charge you rather more than the mall kiosk to make a copy.
> you give one of these to your AirBNB guests or a building maintenance worker or something, and if you get your keys back, you can be reasonably confident that they didn't make any copies.
This seems to be a fairly useless reassurance. If you trust your AirBnB guest so little that you think they might reasonably make copies and distribute your key to unsavory people, then just the single key floating around out there is enough to compromise your security.
The risk is that someone will rent the place and spot an easy opportunity to copy the key and come back when other guests are staying at your Airbnb. Having a known number of official keys out there with a guest means you can keep tabs on those key and retrieve them for "full security". But having an unauthorized copy puts the owner's and every future guest's security at risk until the lock is changed because you cannot retrieve it or even know if it exists.
The idea with Medeco is that you give one of these to your AirBNB guests or a building maintenance worker or something, and if you get your keys back, you can be reasonably confident that they didn't make any copies. You can't be 100% sure, of course, but the average mall machine or even locksmith probably can't help them.
An authorized Medeco agent will want documentation that you have the right to have a key made (you're the owner and not a renter), and they will of course happily charge you rather more than the mall kiosk to make a copy.