Hollywoodpick wrote:When a customer calls do you take CC payment in advance over the phone before going out on the call?
I am not sure that pre-charging a customer prior to arriving at the location where they need service is a good business decision to make -- even if you refund the money to customers whose jobs you refuse, as it creates a business transaction between you and the customer and establishes a basis for certain consumer protections... Blindly establishing a business relationship/transaction between you and an unknown customer with the scant little details you are given over the phone will come back to bite you before you have enough experience under your belt to know the right questions to ask and which answers the customer gives to make you want to avoid getting involved in a situation...
As to the consumer protection aspect of what I said above, before you go charging a customer for anything it is always good to get their signature on a receipt/invoice which has all your company policies/terms of service/fee schedules (charges for bounced checks)/etc. printed on the back along with the phrase "by signing below the above named customer agrees to engage the services of (insert business name here) for the purposes described on the face of this document at the agreed upon price indicated and agrees to all the terms and conditions printed on the back of this invoice", as having your business terms and conditions written out somewhere for the customer to read if they are interested before agreeing to do business with you and having them sign something agreeing to be bound by them is worth gold in the event of some sort of dispute even if the dispute arises after the fact... It would also be a good thing to have a second signature line for acceptance of the work described on the invoice as complete, again in case of some dispute after the fact...
Hollywoodpick wrote:If not do you end up with some customers not being at the location as they might of got in on their own or had other help before you got their?.
That is a risk of the business... Sometimes cheap jerks will call multiple tradespeople at the same time so it becomes like a race -- first there gets the gold at the end of the rainbow...
Hollywoodpick wrote:Are their some cars that you just can not get it at all?
As much as I know about locksmithing my knowledge of the automotive aspect of it is woefully incomplete -- but there will be some cars that are much harder than others to open and some of them you won't be able to open when you are new...
Hollywoodpick wrote:What if the car alarm is on if you use a air bad wedge will that set the alarm off what do you do then?.
Hope that you have hearing protection so you can quickly finish the entry and turn off the alarm... Hope that it is not later in the evening and people don't come out and tell you to stop with the making noise stuff or call the cops to complain, etc... If you don't have hearing protection available then it will be interesting to see if the additional stress caused by the loud car alarm has any impact on your ability to open the car quickly...
Hollywoodpick wrote:How do you 100% make sue the car is the persons that called you?.
Ask the customer for their driver's license or ID when you arrive at the vehicle/house if they have one with them... If not have them write down their address information on your receipt/invoice pad along with their name and date of birth... When you open the car check the name written on your receipt/invoice against the vehicle registration certificate... If there is a discrepancy ask the customer about it and see what they have to say... Always maintain custody of the keys after opening the vehicle until you have verified the customer's claim of being the owner of the car and have received payment from them... I have heard stories from people about things getting ugly after the keys have been handed over prematurely -- it basically becomes a "he said/he said" situation and a jerk customer can cause all kinds of trouble for you if you give them back their keys before getting paid... If you feel fishy about something to do with what the customer is telling you, the name/address of the person not matching the vehicle registration or someone who balks at the price and wants to bargain it down after you open the car, you can always throw the keys back in the car -- lock the door, close it and walk away from the job...
Hollywoodpick wrote:Do you get many tips? i know in the past we have gave a tip to the guy when we got locked out with the truck running in front of Lowes with a truck load of wood i just loaded.
Good luck on expecting tips...
Hollywoodpick wrote:I hate the idea of using a name with AAA or A1 just to be in the top of a list is that something that i do need to do to get more jobs?
You will get more customers by establishing an identity in your community and having a real looking website that doesn't look like a 6th grade technology education project from the 1990's or one of those canned websites that the scammers use that look impressive but are just part of the shell they use... As long as you are indexed by the proper search engines so that someone typing in "locksmith + your city/town" your name will come up in the search results you will at least be considered... Those games with AAAAA etc were for the pre-digital age when people actually used phone books and there were pages and pages of listings under each type of business...
Hollywoodpick wrote:Is anyone here doing car and home lock outs in a tourist town?
No, but then again I am not a practicing locksmith...
Hollywoodpick wrote:I will be starting this is a small town that gets a lot of tourist business around 7 to 9 million people a year i am told.
That sounds like a good seasonal business, are you open to not having a very restful summer and getting calls to replace chip keys after hours that you will have to explain to the customer you can not complete until the next business day when you can get a dealership that knows who you are on the phone to obtain the car computer's PIN code so you can program the new key into the ECM so it will start the engine ?
Hollywoodpick wrote:Do more tourist lock them self out making for more business anyone have info on this?
You don't have to be a tourist to lose your car keys at the beach, woods, amusement park, mall, etc... Are you able to impression keys for vehicles at this point ? That will be an essential skill going forward to be able to make keys for the cars where the key is lost and not available after simply opening a car the owner has locked their keys inside of...
Hollywoodpick wrote:Also with it being a tourist town we have lots of condo and home rentals. If someone calls and wants me to get them into a condo or home they say they rented and locked the keys in how can i know they are the right person that is renting the place before i open the door..
You could always verify that the person claiming to have rented a place has actually rented it by contacting the actual owner of the property before opening the door... You can establish a relationship with your local police department to obtain this information from them if they are willing to provide it to you in the interest of preventing thefts from fraudulent customers gaining entry to premises they have no right to be in... If you are unable to find contact information for the property owner before opening the door then asking the customer to see the rental agreement first thing after opening the door is a good way to prove legitimacy... The names on the rental agreement should match the name on the ID you hold onto from when you arrive until you accept payment... You are always exposed to the risk of fraud being committed upon you when you open cars or houses for someone, this is why you carry surety bonds and general liability insurance...
At the very least you want to establish who someone is before opening a car or house for them... Ask the customer to show you some ID before you start any work and then hold onto the ID until you have accepted payment, if you get a story about where the ID is if they are unable to produce one inform the customer you will need to see it before they can retrieve anything from inside or get the keys they locked inside back... If the customer has a problem with that then something is fishy and you should decline the job...
It is also a good thing to make a note of the license plate numbers of any cars parked outside a house you are called to open, or that are parked next to or near a car you open, as if anything illegitimate happens and you are informed about it at a later date, any information you have about the call is useful in tracking down the person you did the work for...
Hollywoodpick wrote:How do any of you deal with this? i would hate to unlock a door only for the real renter to be ripped off.
See above...
Minimize your risk by always establishing the identity of your customers, recording this information on your invoice/receipt with every transaction and being strict about those rules...
~~ Evan
