Outrageous Locksmith Bills

Over the past few years thousands of citizens in the entire nation have become victims of phony locksmiths. What is a phony locksmith? Phony for using fake addresses to appear anywhere and everywhere a citizen could expect to have need for locksmith services. Phony for using unsuspecting citizen's addresses to create thousands of locksmith listings in the printed directories and on the internet, in a blatant effort to monopolize the mechanisms by which consumers can expect to be able to find a locksmith, such as 411, the white pages, the yellowpages, and of course, the countless number of search engines and directories on the internet. With the phony locksmith companies using so many addresses, most users of a search engine like Google are highly likely to become a victim of one of the thousands of phony locksmith companies in Virginia alone, because they have purposely placed themselves with a phony address in any area they choose, without regard for the safety of the citizen that lives at that address. What has been especially troubling about the obvious methods used to monopolize the market for emergency locksmith service is that the dispatchers will always quote a low service fee over the phone and send an unqualified individual who has had little or no training as a locksmith, and yet will pretend that your lock has to be broken in order to gain entry to your home or business. If you are locked out of your car, they will quote a substantially lower price over the phone than most reputable locksmith companies, and yet charge an exorbitant fee for the labor involved in opening your car, home, or business, instead of quoting a flat fee like most experienced locksmiths would. What a citizen should be able to assume is that a locksmith can pick many locks without damaging them. Unfortunately, the scammers using this phony locksmith marketing strategy know that they can make more money from you by pretending that they cannot pick your lock or not even being capable of picking any lock! We hope that locksmith legislation, with Virginia House Bill 462, will lay the foundation for an aggressive enforement action by the citizens of the State of Virginia, legitimate locksmiths, and law enforcement alike. If you feel you are a victim of a phony locksmith, we want to hear from you! We are interested in collecting any outrageous locksmith bills or any evidence you have that will assist us in prosecuting illegal locksmiths. Without your help, it could take many, many years to eradicate the State of Virginia of this scourge of phony locksmiths. Many honest, law abiding, legal locksmiths are at risk of losing their livelihood due to the unscrupulous, outrageous methods used by companies to aggressively monopolize the locksmith trade. Our commitment to the protection of Virginia consumers includes fairness amongst our peers. Ultimately, a cohesive network of locksmiths that does work together will eventually rid the State of Virginia of individuals who have purposely marketed themselves with phony addresses and blatant disregard for the safety of the individuals living at that address. The first thing you should do is conduct a Google search for your own address and find out if it is being used by a phony locksmith company.

The second thing you can do to protect yourself from ever having a phony locksmith experience is to establish a working relationship with a company you trust, and keep their phone number handy, or even better yet, program their number into your cel phone. In this day and age, your cel phone is almost always still with you even when you forget your keys, we know about these things. More importantly, be aware that one of the worst practices used by these phony locksmith companies is to hijack reputable companies' directory listings to purposely confuse you into thinking you are calling the reputable locksmith company you know and trust. They could use another company's name, verbatim, on the internet, and directories like SuperPages.com or YellowPages.com seem to be doing little or nothing about this particular problem. A reputable company deserves to maintain its good reputation without fear of some irresponsible internet search engine not taking steps to thwart the blatant hijacking of internet listings and use of duplicate trade names of companies you know and trust. Ask for someone you know at the company, and reference your location by use of landmarks. A dispatcher in Florida or New York, which is where many of these phony locksmith phone numbers forward to, will probably not know where your local grocery store is, whereas a truly local locksmith will, and you can tell when they are not truly local. Call the directory again, if you need to, until you are connected with someone that you can tell is actually local to your area, and not pretending to be.

We have provided, free of charge to any locksmith listed in our directory, what we believe is a complete listing of any company doing business legally as a locksmith in the State of Virginia. In essence, we are becoming the Locksmith Police of our own profession. Even if you don't use Baldino's for your locksmith service, we want you to be able to connect to a reputable company and do everything we can to keep customers from wasting their money on phony locksmiths. If you are a locksmith in the State of Virginia and do not see your website link in our directory, feel free to contact us and we will add it after we verify your information. If you are looking for a Baldinos Locksmith, feel free to find your closest Baldino's location below and give us a call to help bring safety and security back to the forefront of what real locksmiths do. Call us today to find out what you can do to assist us and the State of Virginia in prosecuting criminal locksmiths, your outrageous locksmith bill could make the difference.