This explains the bizarre experience I had last year where I needed some keys copied and saw there was a locksmith just down the street so I went down there and couldn't find it. I called to get directions and had the strangest 10 minute conversation with someone who swore up and down they were sitting right there at a real place but could not explain to me how to find it when I was standing "right outside."

I was burned by this before (in SF Bay area). The call center dispatched a guy that took over an hour to finally arrive in his broken-down family van. He came out of his car with a power drill in his hand and asked me where the lock was. The entire time he was smoking. Apparently, he wanted to drill through the lock and replace the whole thing instead of picking the lock like a true locksmith. Luckily there were enough red flags in the whole process to where I promptly told him to get off my property. They still charged me $20 and I ended up paying because I didn't want them to come back and do something to my house. The guy ended up sending my credit card details to "HQ" through a text message.

This is why that Reply All podcast about this topic (posted by someone else in this thread) is titled "Very Quickly to the Drill."

Nice Reply All podcast about the locksmith scam: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87

NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locks...

> Nearly all of those ads promise “$19 service,” or thereabouts, a suspiciously low sum, given that “locksmith”-related ads cost about $30 or so per click, depending on the area.

There's the weapon against them right there. If you're a crusader, don't be a volunteer mapper for Google. Find the fake listings (drive there and look, or street view?) and then click on them, costing the scammers every time. I imagine clicks could be automated once discovered? Or at least shared with other volunteers who can click.

> ...a locksmith in Phoenix, [...] wanted to know how many locksmiths were listed in Arizona. “There were 9,600 of them in the list I got from Acxiom,” he said. “That’s about 9,000 more than anyone believes actually work in the state.”

This is terrible. The honest neighborhood guy is also a victim along with the customers.

This isn't really that industry specific, the rehab scams were the same way: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16257412/rehabs-near-me-go...

You look for a local addiction rehab, but get a call center for a company which pimps out rehab centers in Florida.

I can always tell when I call one of these businesses because they answer the phone with a generic "Locksmith" or "Florist" or whatever instead of "Bob's Locks," or "Farrah's Flowers". It just sounds so weird.

Locksmith use to do the same kinds of scam on 411 services and yellow pages listings. The fees to have multiple business phone lines with the phone company was the real curation.

My uncle was a locksmith. His listing was "AAA Locksmith". He was pretty proud about gaming the indexing system that way.

This is absolutely a case where it's best to forget about high-tech and pick up your Yellow Pages. Any legitimate locksmiths will have their state license number displayed in their ads.

What about yelp?

Last time I needed a locksmith I was very careful to check if they were on Google Street View.

> Locksmith scams have been reported in the U.S.,[8][9][3][10][11] the U.K.,[12][13] and New Zealand.[14][15][16]

Blimey, I thought it only widespreads in Germany.

The locksmith problem on Google Maps is much less severe than it used to be, for a variety of reasons. Spam listings still exist, but it's less systematic than it used to be -- you no longer see one on every intersection of Manhattan, for instance.

i guess this is more likely to happen for one-off work like picking or replacing a lock versus other kinds of business relationship with a higher chance of recurring business --- in the former situation perhaps it doesn't matter so much to burn your reputation by screwing over the client in a one-shot deal

Hmm, hadn't heard about that one.

And has been happening since at least 2014, with articles in the NYTimes as well as other sources.

Florists do something like this too.