Fake Online Locksmiths May Be Out to Pick Your Pocket, Too | Hacker News Reader

Fake Online Locksmiths May Be Out to Pick Your Pocket, Too

nytimes.com

94 pointsoli567955 comments

Regarding Google's Mappers, I find it absolutely absurd that the guy interviewed would spend 10 hours daily and even signing an NDA just to help, as the article says, "one of the world’s richest companies" for free. And then instead of acknowledging his stunt they just ban him. If only he'd discovered freely licenses projects like OpenStreetMap where the data belongs to everyone and where the community is put first. That's why I can't stand crowdsourcing, you're essentially doing free labor just to make some company's crappy data better for yourself. It's a nice bit of social engineering which masks the true beneficiary of the scheme and hides the actual power structure.

> The company is dominated by software coders, and they want to solve the most interesting problems, or create the coolest products.

This remark also rings true for software in general, no one wants to maintain "legacy" code or do maintenance in lieu of new features. That's why we have so many rewrites and NIH syndrome. Of course higher-ups incentivize this because it makes it look like the products are growing and innovating, leading to cruft like a random program evolving to send email.

I totally agree, I've contributed myself to OpenStreetMap for a few things which were not totally correct and I this way at least I know it's something everyone (including myself) will be able to use it after.

He made fake edits that were against the terms of service. Why should Google tolerate that?

Oh they're well within their rights to do that. However my complaint had to do with the fact that one of their higher ranked volunteers was trying to point to an issue with the system after being dismissed and instead of trying to work with their community and address it, they just ban him instead. To quote him:

> For me, it was always like I was looking at a five-alarm fire,” he said. “To them, it was smoldering.

Because he fixed thousands of fake edits that were against the terms of service.

Apps like HotelTonight and AirBnB also mean that your chances of finding a last-minute deal on a place to crash are probably better than finding a last-minute deal on a locksmith. Even better is a friend's couch :)

A friend of mine got scammed like this in the middle of the night, it ended up costing him somethings like €300. One night I found myself in a similar situation and just walked into a nice nearby hotel, gave them my story, and they let me have a unbooked room for a decent rate. After a nice night's sleep, 15 minutes in the gym sauna, and a good breakfast I was able to go to my local locksmith who could get my door open for a reasonable rate.

It's gotten to a point where I now prefer contractors (hvac stuff, plumbing, electricians etc, but also a carpenter and a stained glass restoration guy I needed a few months ago) who do not have a website; if they've been in business for 5+ years or so, they are most likely getting enough work from referrals to not need having to spend money on a website. And those getting their work from referrals are the ones you want (usually).

I've been involved with a contractor who relied exclusively on internet leads (nobody in their right mind would recommend him) and much of his time was spent giving quotes for low value work that rarely materialised into an order.

Most people using the internet for sourcing a tradesman, in my experience, are those looking for the cheapest price or just fantasists and time wasters.

I think most consumers expect a contractor/tradesman to have some kind of web presence but it really should be just a brochure type site and/or blog. The best work is almost always going to come from word of mouth referrals.

I found my doctor, dentist, plumber, roofer, landscaper, and am currently looking for an electrician online. All through: google and Angie's List.

I immediately excluded anyone who has no website, and will continue to do so. It just means you don't care about your business, if I have the choice I'll also exclude people who have no online reviews.

The only time I myself could be described as a "time waster" was with the landscaper, but in fairness that was because they were completely booked up until the following season.

The whole thing seems like an age issue, people who grew up with the internet use the internet to find places and services, people who didn't still open a Yellow Pages and dial the biggest advert.

I second the Angie's List recommendation. If you go with only people who have an A rating and many reviews, I've never gotten poor service. Also, when you think about the hundreds or thousands you could lose with a bad contractor, the annual fee for access is a drop in the bucket.

My fiance and I have good and bad experience with Angie's list. The plumber we hired from Angie's was excellent, but the painter was bad, had to repaint everything ourselves again. But we had good lock using Nextdoor to find an excellent painter.

To give some opposite anecdote...

My wife and I recently (under a year ago) moved into a house in an area that was totally new to us. If it wasn't for Angie's List we'd have been screwed. Really great website there for people new to an area, absolute bargain.

We received a couple of referrals from our otherwise excellent realtor. One turned out okay, but we could tell immediately that one was going to be bad and didn't go with him.

Or people age <= 30

Pretty much what he said. :)

I used to use yelp to find the best-reviewed contractor in my area. However, that's no longer a tenable strategy, because in my opinion, those contractors are flooded with easy and profitable requests and have no need to prioritize a schmoe like me. It's genuinely hard to get top-rated contractors to give me the time of day.

Once it took me 2 weeks of trying a guy, waiting for him to not reply, trying the next guy, waiting for him to cancel my appointment, trying the next, etc.

I tried picking one at random, and I got a couple of jamaican stoners with super-charming accents who did a shitty job and then poured paint thinner on my lawn (poisoning the area for about 3 years) while cleaning their equipment.

It's a hard problem in some areas.

How is it relevant that they were Jamaican? Why point that out?

because, per my original comment, they had super-charming accents. I added the word "jamaican" so that you could imagine the accent.

Would it have made you more comfortable if I said "two gentlemen of an unspecified national origin who had super-charming jamaican accents"?

You aren't alone. I am a tradesman and run my own business, people are always surprised when I don't use angieslist, homeadvisor, etc.

I always thought my word and a handshake was better than any internet deal, and I have built a successful business on that.

You don't have to do "internet deals" to have a presence online. Just list your key contact information, services you offer, and pictures of your previous work (if applicable).

It doesn't need to be fancy, you just need to exist.

But why? If he can be completely booked up with solid clients just on word of mouth alone, why even bother with an internet presence?

Hell, that describes me and I'm nowhere close to being a home contractor - I haven't applied to a job the traditional way in 7+ years, and all the jobs I've worked have been via my network.

This is preferable, since I don't have to deal with tire kickers or companies that lowball me - my network filters that - and the quality of jobs that get put in front of me are all pretty high quality.

Casting the net wide and slapping your contact info everywhere is one way to do it, I'm not sure why there's the belief that this is somehow necessary, or even better than the alternatives.

> If he can be completely booked up with solid clients just on word of mouth alone, why even bother with an internet presence?

If he can be, don't, but is that realistic for most businesses?

If you legitimately don't need business leads then don't do a website, but also don't do the Yellow Pages, or the local paper. But being in such a position is rare and a privilege.

"But being in such a position is rare and a privilege."

It's not so rare as you might think. Of course I only started learning about this once I (accidentally) got introduced into such a 'network' (it's not an organized or sinister plot, just something that organically grows). Plus yes it's only the best who can work like this; which are exactly the ones you want to find. Which was the point of my original post: not having/needing an internet presence signals being high quality, in 2016. It's the chumps that need to shell out the money to the web design firms and SEO guys and 'lead generators' and bidding sites (you know, all the 'elance for plumbers' sites - I know it's the wet dream of most geeks not having to pick up a phone ever again any more, and getting job quotes via email, but it's a sure way to get the bottom feeders...).

Anyone who operates on "a word and a handshake" is presumed to be a scammer. If you don't believe in it enough to put it in writing, I am not going to believe in it.

I wouldn't go so far as to avoid them if they have a website. However, my own opinion is that if you need a locksmith or a plumber, go to the good-old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Look for someone local, and LOOK FOR THE LICENSE NUMBER. If you're sufficiently paranoid, check up on that license number before calling them.

A good sign is referrals, and too busy to the point where you need to cajole them to work.

I got hit by this scam a few years ago. My wife called the first number in google and they said for $50 they could come open my front door. The guy gets there and says "oh these locks are too complicated I need to drill it out and it'll be $350". I told him I'd give him $50 cash under the table and he could tell his boss I told him to go fuck himself. He drilled the lock which spurred my wonder of how hard it was to actually pick a simple residential lock.

I bought a lockpicking kit, a new lock and learned that even somebody with little skill and some practice could have picked that lock in 10-15 minutes. It would seem they drill all locks out regardless of difficulty to eliminate any required skillset.

Recently my car battery died on a side-street without much through-traffic. No one else I know has a car (I live in NYC), so I had to call someone to jump it for me. It cost $75.

The guy used a portable jump-starter, which I'd never seen before. So I looked it up when I got home, and bought it on Amazon for ~100 bucks. When my battery died again, I jumped it myself and I'm now just one jump away from 'saving' money.

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying all these services (like locksmiths, car-jumpers, etc) can be avoided with minimal effort and a little bit of know-how. There is something rewarding about being self-sufficient in that way.

Sorry if this wasn't completely on point!

Coatco sells portable jumpstart batteries for $35, and they will charge your USB devices during not emergencies too.

just fyi, new york city taxi cabs and black cars will often jump you for $10-20. just call a dispatcher and explain your situation

It's not the difficulty of the lock but just the fact that it's there as a deterrent. If someone really wants to get into your home they'd break a window or kick down the door. The lock is mostly for crimes of opportunity and personal reassurance.

It's faster to just drill out the lock. A worker can handle more clients per day that way. Also, they get to sell you a new lock, and install it too. It makes perfect rational sense from the locksmith's point of view.

Their description of what happens sounds like every emergency locksmith I've ever dealt with, irrespective of Google. When people call emergency locksmiths out they are in trouble and often taken advantage of.

Higher prices for faster service is just the nature of any professional services business. Look at PCB fab and assembly there is a premium paid for shorter lead times. Likewise if call out a plumber or locksmith or whatever in the middle of the night it is going to be more expensive than if you can wait until the next business day.

Granted the tactic of quoting a very cheap price like in the story and then charging substantially higher on the spot is not ethical but I would be suspicious for any on demand professional service that responds immediately and quotes a low price.

Avoiding all this pain sounds like a great idea for a startup.

Tellng a couple of kids to disrupt the lock picking industry would probably end up with a situation less scam-like, but equally terrible.

At least it would be cheaper until the VC money ran out.

I was going to say uber locksmithing but the uber method for fee calculation would but their fees way higher. :-)

uber for locksmithing would basically be having people come over to your house who happened to have lockpicking kits handy.

And would have the associated effect of providing a very clear analogue for the protesting licensed taxi operators.

Actually an uber like surge pricing would be quite a good idea.

This happened to me, about 6 years ago, and it was a fairly widely-known phenomenon then, too. Fortunately, I wasn't on the hook for the bill -- the only key to my apartment had been ruined by Home Depot while cutting a copy, during a series of mistakes on their part. They are generally the first listing you'll find when Googling something like "locksmiths near <your city>"

The only negative part was that, of course, he announced after pretending (badly) to work on the lock for a bit that the (very standard, relatively low-security) lock on my door was "too difficult" and he wouldn't be able to cut a key for it, so he had to drill it out and give me new keys, which I then had to distribute to my landlord. Other than that, I got in, was reimbursed, so win for me.

I hired a legitimate lock smith a few years later to create a missing key for my motorcycle, and the difference between the two was VAST. He had a key-cutting facility in the back of his van that was better-stocked and had more tools and machinery than the ones you sometimes find in brick-and-mortar lock smith shops.

There is also a selection bias when it comes to the lead gen business model.

The best locksmiths or movers don't usually buy leads. They either have enough word of mouth referrals or have built their own marketing.

Buying leads is typically a very low return on investment decision for companies not planning on using bait-and-switch tactics.

Case-in-point: if you're going to try and disrupt this market, realize your acquisition costs are going to be just as high as the scummy lead gen providers and the high-quality lock smith companies aren't going to want to pay you.

Word-of-mouth doesn't work if you service an area with visitors/tourists or those unfamiliar with your brand. Auto lockouts are common in these areas, less so in areas where the customer lives as they can call a friend/relative for help.

This requires good, reputable locksmiths to utilize and optimize for Google - and that's where they are exposed to these competitors and (from my experience) a cautious Google.

Doesn't solve the google spam problem but regardling locksmiths to get into your car specifically, check your auto insurance.

If you have brand name insurance, they often have an AAA-like option for $10 every six months. Does towing, gas, locksmith, etc.

I know geico has this and probably progressive and others.

For $20 a year it is a no-brainer. You'll use at least one of the services every couple years so it pays for itself.

I used my insurance's towing service. Never again. It's worth having AAA, even if your insurance includes this "service."

AAA was the best thing I ever did. I complained for 6 years that I was wasting money on AAA.

Then I had some seriously bad reliability issues with my car. AAA towed me, for no added expense, 8 times over 5 months. Never complained again. The tow driver showed up promptly and took me wherever I needed to go within 100 miles.

Could you explain?

I used the insurance twice. I had to wait three hours both times, in Denver. Both times I had to call back to remind them I was waiting. On one call, the original company just never sent anyone, and the "service" had to start over again.

The operator actually chastised me for calling back too son.

My impression was it was a call center somewhere in the country, and they did the equivalent of looking up a tow for you in the yellow pages/internet.

AAA has always been within the window they said, always professional, always effective. I've had them out for tows, jump starts, locked out, even had a battery replaced once by the guy who came out.

The subscription is per person, so if you're riding with someone else and they don't have AAA, no problem.

Thanks for that. My policy also states a reimbursement method (within limits). I would probably go that route given your experience.

Why Israelis? The moving industry is just as bad, if you look at the DOT's most wanted movers list it's almost all Israelis.

You have a tight community that will keep their mouths shut and a steady pipeline of people coming in looking for work. Great fodder for criminals.

It starts with one enterprising individual, who grows the industry via a personal network (people with no opportunity in the legitimate market, which especially applies to immigrants who have no other connections to the larger community)

I wonder how much of Google's massive ad revenue is things like this. From a purely financial point of view, fixing this wouldn't be much of a priority.

As a locksmith in i Agree. Before calling an locksmith check all detail about them, whether they are licensed or not.We are 24 hours licensed locksmith in Texas area. http://carroltton.toprated-locksmith-service-24hr.com/

Pay per call

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