24 Hour Commercial Locksmith Service

A popular scam amongst countless unscrupulous locksmith scammers is taking advantage of people in the middle of personal emergencies to rip off home owners and people stuck outside of their cars. A number of legitimate locksmiths even hold the common belief that a good portion of the widespread fraud is all part of an illegal underground organized crime operation. Commercial Locksmith professionals are specialized in Lockouts, Lock Re-Key, Lock Repair and Lock Installation.

How locksmiths scam people is very simple. Say you are locked out of your home/car/office or you need to change your locks as soon as possible for one reason or another, maybe you were just robbed or you were forced to evict a tenant, you try looking for a locksmith online or thumb through a phone book.

After a few seconds you call up a locksmith who doesn’t give a quote over the phone but agrees to the job anyway. They do the job then they grossly overcharge you for the service. Prices can be up to 10 times what professional locksmiths usually charge and since the service is completed, you are not in a good position to argue the bill.

Several unlicensed locksmiths are all over the internet, usually advertising cheap prices. They can take apart the lock then come up with hidden charges to complete the job. The customer is now forced to pay up or leave their home or business without a working lock.

A number of locksmith scammers usually threaten to call the police, or use intimidation tactics if a customer refuses to pay up. Some of them even ask for a credit card upfront and refuse to hand it back.

In many cases, fake locksmiths can even cause damage to your car or home which will cost you more to fix later on. An even scarier prospect is that unlicensed locksmiths do not go through mandatory background checks so you could be giving felons access to your homes via duplicate key. Not all states require locksmiths to operate with a license further exacerbating the problem.

Take note that almost all experienced professional locksmiths will have no problems dealing with common lockout issues and rarely ever resort to having to drill out the locks. Cars are quite easy to open and should only take a couple of minutes through the use of specialized tools. The same goes for most doors.

So if you are ever in the middle of an emergency and are in a big hurry for a locksmith to come, how do you find a legitimate professional amidst all the con artists?

Unfortunately there is no real way to weed out the fakes in a hurry. If you cannot get a recommendation from a friend, you can try calling at least 3 and getting different quotes. Explain your situation and make sure you get a bid before agreeing. Professional locksmiths handle these kinds of situations all the time and will be able to give you a ballpark figure. As one last reminder watch out for bids that seem suspiciously low, if it’s too good to be true it probably is.