The Kingston Locksmith 22-09-08

Sometimes I find myself completely amazed by some of the things I have found done to some poor persons door. If I paid a tradesman to do that much damage to a door they had better be into demolition. In the UK locksmiths industry, there is currently no licensing for locksmiths... THERE SHOULD BE!

Any one can set themselves up as a Locksmith in the UK and London. All you need is a bit of money to do it. There are many companies out there who see the Locksmiths industry as a road to a quick buck. They will charge stupidly high prices, fit inferior hardware, and carry out as much unnessasary work as possible to bump up the money they can squeeze out of a customer. They carry on until there reputation in an area is ruined, then move on and start again. Anyone who has seen ‘House of Horrors’ will know exactly what I mean.

I attended a job in Kingston this evening, this is a picture of the lock that I pulled out of the poor customers door.

Can you see the damage to the bolt ? This lock is normally operated by a profile cylinder. The locksmith who was called drilled out the cylinder and could still not get the bolt retracted to open the door. So he then started to drill holes and cut the bolt. After about 2 hours he decided that it couldn’t be opened but that the customer still owed him £220+vat for his time !

The customers husband quite rightly escorted the guy of the premises. They called us. I had a look at the door and noticed a stone wedged between the door and the doorstop at the bottom. All it took was a quick flick with of a screwdriver to move the stone. This released the pressure on the door and the lock opened easily. If the guy had asked himself why the lock was not opening and not just waded in with his drill and a hacksaw he would have made some easy money. If he had known what he was doing the customer would not have needed a new lock and cylinder. I wont name names but suffice to say this was a local Kingston Locksmith.

Regards

Steve The Kingston Locksmith.