New Twist On Locksmith Scams

A new twist to the issue plaguing American cities and the once reputeable locksmith industry.

It has become apparent that the sham companies and masqueraders are becoming much more bold in their endeavours to destroy the locksmith industry from outside, using techniques that border on the rediculous.

A story appeared last week on CBS2 Chicago about well known and long established locksmith Gale Johnson. Gale is an industry stalwart and editor of the world reknowned Locksmith Ledger Magazine.

This particular story, highlighted a new twist to the ongoing saga of the locksmith scammer issues. It seems apparent that established locksmith companies are now coming under attack through AT&T directly. Not by AT&T but by people apparently calling AT&T to cancel advertizing related to particular established telephone numbers. Johnsons Locksmiths in Evanston Illinois, has been established in excess of 65 years in the Chicago area. They are a repeated victim of the scammers attempts to steal their trading name and telephone number.

And to top all this off, AT&T admit to a problem with multiple free listings in the locksmith sections of their telephone books, across the country.

In my town, there are fake listings not just in Yellow Pages but also across multiple mediums including but not limited to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yellow Pages etc, for locksmiths that advertise addresses and telephone numbers similar to my personal address and my business telephone number, in the hope that potential customers will be misled to call them instead of whom they were intending (me).

I took a call last week from a customer who told me that they had called one of the numbers asking for me by name and the operator transferred the call to someone posing as me.

The customer knew something was not right due to the person they were speaking to, did not sound like me, nor did they recollect any of our past dealings.

That these people will stoop to such depths to ruin a persons reputation and rip off unsuspecting customers is another example of the loopholes that are being discovered in search mediums.

The current economic situation is bad enough to encourage these charlottans to perform this new breed of espionage on the unsuspecting general public and marketplace.