Local doesn’t always mean local
There’s been a lot of talk about trust amongst those at the top recently. You probably couldn’t avoid all the talk of the European Super League a couple of weeks ago, and now the front pages of the newspapers are full of tales of political machinations, dodgy denials, and £58,000 refurbishments of flats in Downing Street. Whatever the truth, it’s brought the subject of honesty to the forefront. In a way, that’s the subject I’ll be looking at that today, but more related to the world of locksmiths. You could say my profession is indebted to dishonesty, given it’s due to burglars that we even have to exist in the first place, but that’s where any deceitfulness should end. Unfortunately that’s not always the case and today I’ll look at how that lack of trust can occasionally overflow into the profession itself.
When people find themselves in need of a Barnsley locksmith, it’s often quite an urgent situation – in the aftermath of a break-in, or being locked out of their house. If they don’t already know of a locksmith, the most likely way they’ll find one is by turning into an internet search engine. Usually it’s the one rhyming with Boogle, I think you know the one. And it’s entirely understandable – whatever your thoughts of the company, it’s changed forever how we find information. So, you do a search for your home town and locksmiths and what comes up? Well, usually the top results have the letters Ad next to them, showing they’re sponsored or paid-for results. After this come the most popular results – the order is generally dictated by Google’s secret algorithms to bring you the most pertinent results.
A reasonable assumption would be that the algorithm is providing you with the most useful companies in the paid section too, so that if you’ve searched local, it’s providing you local companies, approved by customers. This assumption is not always sound. There may be some decent results there but unfortunately is likely that a chunk of them will be for companies who, despite having locksmith-sounding names like “Barnsley locksmith mega locks 24/7”, have no locksmith expertise at all, and the person you call will be unlikely to have even ever changed a lock. But why is this?
This seemingly plausible-sounding Barnsley Yorkshire Mega Locks 24/7 or similar may actually be a call centre, based hundreds of miles away, perhaps even outside of the UK. These call centres have convinced Google that they are a local company despite being nothing of the sort. They are actually “lead generators”, so called because they take the call and pass on these “leads” to local subcontractors (often poorly-trained) who then set out for your home. The lead generator will take up to 40% of the final bill, and the bill is often the source of the trouble.
Beware of lead generation companies
A lead generator company works by getting the customer to pay the subcontractor as much money as possible, given they get a good chunk of the income as commission. A common way of doing this is for them to use the bait and switch technique. This is where the bait is an initially very reasonable quoted price on the phone which will get the customer hooked and agreeing to the subcontractor visiting. However, on arrival, the job mysteriously increases in price three or fourfold, as they find other work that needs doing, or say it’s more complicated than it first appeared. At this stage the subcontractor is in the customer’s house, often following an emergency situation, and the customer feels they have no choice but to pay up. In 90% of cases involving these lead generators, the final bill is more than the initial quote and it’s not uncommon for an initial £50 quote to end in a final bill of £350 to £500.
As well as the bill, a further problem with this system of lead generators and sub-contractors is that the lead generators can have a very brief existence before being replaced by a slightly differently-named one in order to evade authorities or to stay one step ahead of google (who, to give them credit, do try to crack down on these companies). This brief existence means there is no comeback for the customer if the work is shoddy. They don’t have the name of the actual subcontractor, only the shell company which has now changed name. So the cost piles up when another locksmith is required to fix the work of the first contractor, who may well have not even been a legitimate locksmith in the first place.
Lead generators don’t care about repeat business
The crucial thing to remember is that, unlike your local legitimate locksmith, Lead generators are not interested in repeat customers. Given the shoddiness of the work of some of their contractors, it’s unlikely they’d get them anyway. They just want to get as much as they can out of a new customer, take their 40% cut, pass the job on to a sub-contractor, and move on, changing their website domain name every few months or so, in order to bait a whole set of new customers.
There’s no great solution to the issue of these lead generator companies. Google does crack down on them, but new ones pop up all the time. As a customer, the best you can do is go on recommendations of your friends and family, and keeping the details of any locksmith you’ve had good service from before. Given that we often call a locksmith in an emergency when perhaps we’re not thinking clearly, it’s worth doing research now and saving the number of a trusted locksmith in your phone before the need arises. Then when you’re in that situation you can simply use the saved number instead of turning to google and running the risk of falling foul of a lead generator.
As for myself, I hope that I’m the antithesis of these fake companies. I’m a sole trader and make do without the aid of call centres, unless voicemail counts! I try and show integrity and honesty in my work, providing realistic quotes and doing my damndest to stick to them. My business exists because of word of mouth, recommendations and repeat customers, so it’s in my interest as well as my customers to be upfront and transparent, otherwise I’d swiftly lose business. I may not make as much from one job as the sub-contractors from the lead generators would make, but by giving a professional standard of work and honest charges, I hope that the impression I leave will lead to further work down the line. And I can sleep at night knowing I haven’t ripped off my customers.
It does appear at times as if dishonesty is rife in the world, whether it’s sport, politics or business. But I try and look on the positive and that most people are fundamentally honest and decent. It’s the wrong ‘uns that give the rest a bad name, and that’s my big issue with the lead generators companies – they tarnish the name of honest locksmiths. So do be careful out there.