What is all the fuss about Locksmiths in Google?

There has been a recent flurry of activity on many SEO blogs regarding Locksmiths across the country. Whats the deal?

Most locksmith listings in the United States are now Phony. They far out number the legitimate locksmiths...probably by an unspeakable order of magnitude. If you pick a phone number at random from the internet, odds are you will be ripped off.

A search in any major city (or lots of rural areas) will result in a massive display of fradulent listings. In one recent article an SEO guru noted there according to Google there are more locksmiths in NYC than Cabs. This is an obvious exploit that is being conducted by unscrupulus people

The Associated Locksmiths of America (www.aloa.org) has been doing it's best to combat this but this is beyond the ability of 'outsiders' to do anything. It may be even be beyond the capacity of law enforcement and Google themselves to correct the problem as well.

As the largest legitimate provider of locksmith service in the United States, we have become a centralized point for many locksmiths to complain about this scammer/phoney/spammer locksmith problem. We have invested SIGNIFICANT amounts of money into legal fees, research and communication into helping combat this both on our own behalf as well as independent locksmith who we have no formal relationships with in some cases. We have the most formal complaints on file with Google, the legal system and the yellow page directories.

Why is this a big deal?

The scam is robbing customers for tons of money by overcharging them many times the going rate to have service performed. There are also some serious questions regarding how taxes are being paid and if the 'worker bees' that are being imported to perform the work, usually form outside the country, are possibly being exploited.

"Go along with the scam or you might you lose your citizenship." This is the unspoken sword of damaclese hanging over the head of the employees (actually most of them are not w2 employees they are not paying payroll taxes).

So what can be done?

I'm truly at a loss for a magic bullet solution for the whole situation. However, from our standpoint there is a magic bullet: Don't Call a locksmith...call Pop-A-Lock instead. If stranded individuals or individuals in need of locksmith service just called us directly, we could take care of them nationwide and no one would ever get ripped off by locksmiths again.

We are the only company who can make that claim and have massive amounts of historical data to justify the statement. Since 1991 we have performed literally millions of calls and from BBB records, I estimate that we have a legitimate complaints in the Six Sigma range against our work. I'm sure any Six Sigma Guru can appreciate how incredible that is, particularly for a service business that is resolving such an 'emotional' problem as that of people being stranded and locked out of their house, business or vehicle.

About the most legitimate complaint we occasionally get is that we arrive later than projected. This is a statisically very small percentage. The reality of the nature of traffic and the unpredictability of certain types of work contributes to this and we often reduce the cost of service to help compensate...even though it may have been something out of our control.

From a data sample of nearly 3 years worth of data our Average ETA for road service calls is under 34 minutes, in some cities that arrival time is less than 20 Minutes. That is not 'projected time' that is measured data from the time a request for service is sent out until the tech is onsite with the customer. That metric can also be vetted against data from Major roadservice providers who have used us in the past as well.

We currently service over 148 MSA's in the US, which is about 5000 communities with real tax paying, American, W-2 employees. In areas where we have no Pop-A-Lock we recommend locksmiths from the Associated Locksmiths of America Database or state licensing databases that we have real time access to 24 hours a day.

We pay our taxes, we pay fair wages and offer benefits to our employees in many locations. This gives us a very stable base of knoweledgable employees who, unlike the majority of the industry, require at least a certain amount of formal training before they are allowed to service customers.

We are licensed both as a company and down to the employee in every state and city that requires licensing. Our own requirements for employees usually far exceed the requirements dictated by the governing authority over locksmiths in the state.

To be clear: There are thousands of great locksmiths around, some of these people are the most skilled people in the world at a very demanding trade that can be very difficult to get training in specialized subjects. If someone has a longstanding relationship with an existing locksmith, by all means use someone you know and trust. The last thing you do though is look up a locksmith at random from the yellow pages, 411 or the internet.

All circumstances considered, if you have no other information and you are stranded the smartest thing to do from a purely statistical and logical perspective is to call 1-800-Pop A Lock (or a local number through 411 or your smart phone browser). If we have someone in your MSA we will service you at a fair price, if we don't we will give you the next best option in your area if any other options exist.

If you are a locksmith and have found that your ad has been hijacked, please submit your complaint directly to Google through this link (http://maps.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=maps_spam)

Our home website to find locksmiths nationwide is: http://www.popalock.com/locations.php