Locksmith Call Centers, Time To Take Action | Locksmith Blog

Avoiding National Locksmith Call Centers!

Working as a locksmith it is becoming increasingly common to meet customers who have been ripped off or left unhappy with the work, some even fearing that they may have disclosed security information to untrustworthy individuals. Victims of the money grabbing national call center operations that charge ludicrous hidden fees and charge for unnecessary work.

So what the hell is going on here?

Large national locksmith chains spend millions of pounds each year on advertising. They buy up multiple pages of adverts in physical directories using different company names and redirect phone numbers to appear local and dupe the customers into believing they are dealing with a genuine local locksmith. This massive expenditure is passed directly onto the customers who would be lucky to ever pay less than £100 for the simplest of jobs and anywhere upto £500 (one of the worst I heard of).

More often than not the 'locksmith' or engineer as they like to refer to them as, typically with less than a few months experience under the belt, will be dispatched from their nearest point, which could be miiiiiiiiiiiles away. The customer is always reassured they will be no more than 30 mins away, but this is rarely the case and I have met customers that were left stranded for hours before eventually trying to cancel. At this point they have usually already taken note of your card details and will bill you for their call out anyway despite failing to show.

If they actually show up to do the work it is usually of poor standard due to the locksmiths lack of experience. I have been to jobs where they have fled tail between legs after wrecking door mechanisms and claiming they need to order parts.

Why don't they employ real locksmiths?

Truth is, no half decent locksmith in Cannock would entertain them. Firstly he would be working for a small percentage of the job. Secondly, who wants to help a competitor take work from their own area?

Having had the misfortune of working for several of these national locksmiths in my earlier years I quickly decided that I did not want to be the person handing over ridiculous bills to the elderly, having to beg the call center to pay me my money on time and work for peanuts.

We need to educate our customers on the best ways to avoid these national scammers to ensure we do not all get tarred with the same brush. It is not acceptable and we must make a stand.
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National locksmith companies and content theft | Locksmith Blog

 

As you may know, running  a locksmith business and a good website is tough work!

I for one work hard to take original photos and write new content for my websites and locksmith blogs.

However in recent weeks iv noticed a lot of my images getting ripped off and used on other locksmith sites.

Ok you expect this to a certain degree its the price you pay for popularity on the web, however it really begins to P me off when rival locksmith companies, particularly national advertisers use images of me opening locks and working.

This is both a breach of UK copyright laws and im sure some form of human rights laws.

Firstly; I do not wish to be associated with a rogue poor performing national locksmith company that rips off its customers.

Secondly; no credit is ever given for the use of your image or content and you will never benefit from it in the way of extra exposure or locksmith work.

In fact this content theft can be harmful to your own locksmith website as Google penalises duplicate content and can sometimes leave the offenders locksmith website ranking above you in the SERPS!

A good tool to detect content theft is here at copyscape

So if you do spot this kind of content theft from your own sites you must act!

Firstly contact the locksmith company directly, usually they have no knowledge of the theft of content as its usually left to an independant web designer.

If they cannot get the content removed or at least link back to you in some form for the use of your work then it is worth threatening legal action to remove the content from the locksmiths website.

I'v found that a lot of these locksmith companies are incredibly difficult to contact as they usually only display a premium rate number and no working email address or physical address.

All the more reason to support the NO to nationals campaign over at http://www.locksmith-directory.org.uk and make sure these crooked locksmith companies die off as quickly as they spring up.