Strange Story -

[Sinifar]

So I am wrapping up a local residential job, and like I always do, asked -- "How did you find us?" I am curious as to our effectiveness of the advertising, membership in BBB, or just the internet war. AND he said ---

""I had Googled Waukesha Locksmith near 53189, and Waukesha Locksmith came up. I called the number and it was disconnected. Then I clicked on the link in the ad, and your web page came up.""

Curious how this all happened. How did a scammers web page turn into ours?

Inquiring minds would love to know ...

Sinifar

PS, I am not complaining, but would love to know how this went down --

SSSSS

WE are on the march, the empire is on the run.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Not too uncommon. They'll pay for the ad and just use your identity, including your website, to really sell the product. The only thing difference, usually, is just the phone number - and that goes to them.

They have hijacked websites, however, in the past and even purported to be at an actual locksmiths location. The name of the game is just to get the calls. They have come up with many clever, but incredibly unethical and some blatantly illegal, ways of doing that.

See if you can try to determine which ad the customer found and report it to Google. Some locksmiths poo poo Google entirely over this situation but I know of many locksmiths who have contacted Google (myself included) to correct erroneous information. Just try to be as specific as possible and stick to the point.

If every locksmith monitored their local area, website, and even their competition on Google and made efforts to correct misinformation on Google, Yelp!, Kudzu, wherever then this problem would have never developed into what it's become. It wouldn't have prevented it outright but it would have saved a lot of people a lot of headaches.

[cledry]

Yeah we had a scammer using photos of our shop etc. and pretending it was their shop.

We now get a scammer who knows nothing about locks bring his customer's locks to our shop for rekeying. We of course charge him more than we would charge anyone else and get a credit card up front.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Yeah we had a scammer using photos of our shop etc. and pretending it was their shop.

We now get a scammer who knows nothing about locks bring his customer's locks to our shop for rekeying. We of course charge him more than we would charge anyone else and get a credit card up front.

Hope this doesn't derail the thread but they (the scammers) would always bring in every single part of a Simplex 1000 to have the combo changed at an all shop I worked at. Everything. All the screws.

Another guy I worked with used to purposefully feed them bad info about locks, parts, etc. at the pick up counter at the nearby IDN.

I don't see many of them in Atlanta anymore. Not like I used to at least.