locksmith batman wanted

[Warder]

Its people like this who give the profession a bad name. Where's our 'batman' to clean the streets of these miscreants?

A dispute was reported on Frame Road. A woman told police she had locked herself out of her home at appoximately 7:30 a.m. and called a locksmith. She alleges the locksmith stated he would arrive in 20 minutes. After two hours, she called another locksmith. The original locksmith arrived at the residence and drilled a hole in her door and asked for payment in the amount of $270. She told police she had canceled the original locksmith and refused to pay. The officer told the locksmith he should not have drilled a hole in her door without her permission and overcharged her for the service. The locksmith agreed to accept $25 in payment. Police advised the locksmith not to work in (name removed) County again.

[chris]

Wow....not release form for the work, just walks up and drills a hole. Douche bags. $270 bucks, amazing. The world is full of people like this unfortunately.

[rbrande1]

This is quite common I'm afraid.

If you look in the phone book around here, you'll see about twenty or thirty bogus lockshops all with similar names listed all together. All the addresses listed don't exist or are residences or other businesses.

The basic con goes something like this.

You lock yourself out.

You call a locksmith.

They show up and tell you that the locks you have are super high security and can't be picked.

They do a shitty job of drilling them out, then charge you hundreds of dollars.

It's a shame really.

Buyer beware. If you need to call a locksmith, make sure they've been around for a little while. In small business, reputation is everything, and most will do most anything to protect it, especially if you've been around for 40+ years.

[sandman]

the real problem is, their companies that back them, that are based out of florida now, pay 100s of thousands of a year, just on advertising alone to flood the market, so when you type in lockout, or 24/7 lockout, or 24/7 locksmith from your phone, or computer, or 411, you will get the first 100 numbers, all different numbers, but all headquartered out of florida, then dispatched to local scamers in your area. they are super competitive towards each other, the scamers, so the good news is, there is usualy only 1 or two for 1 city. thats y their always 2 or 3 hours late. the company in florida will not hire more than 2 in a city. for example, in colorado, we had 2 scamers, covering all of denver and the towns surrounding it. and they were in competition with each other, and after so many months, if one did much better than the other, the florida company would tell the lesser one to move to a different city like colorado springs.
i went on a ride along with one of these scamers a year ago. i watched him make 1700 in 7 hours!!!, he didnt drill anything infront of me, they were all car lock outs, but he was charging 160bucks for each car, and showing up 2 hours late cause we were driving between fort collins, and castle rock, thats around 100 miles! and we made that trip about 4 times that day. he bought all his supplies for duplicating car keys and house keys from H.L.Flake, and was very knowledgeable on locksmithing. BUT, he was a crook, so he used that knowledge to burn people. he would charge for the trip, the service, the removal of a lock, the disasembly of a lock, the rekeying of a lock, and he would actualy, no shit, charge for putting the lock back on the door!!!!!! next thing you know, he was 200 bucks richer in 10 fucking minutes.
it was very tempting, he needed someone to cover the south side of the city while he covered the north, this person needed to have locksmith skills, but want to be dirty and scam people. i played along and made him think i was the man for the job, but, i never called him back, even though i was about to lose my apartment and had bills out the ass. i just couldnt do it.
now, im about to go to police academy to be a cop. must be because i have a good heart and want to help people and not hurt them or scam them. but i know everthing there is to know about this scam, and will definitly use it against the guys that are doing it to the people in my town.