May22

This post is mainly aimed at new comers to the trade who might be short of work and are thinking about working for a national locksmith company but it might also be worth a read for the established locksmiths as well.

There’s been a lot of hype over the past few months about national locksmith companies, you can almost feel the tension building and the frustration of the genuine local locksmiths. Rick the pick has just covered the same topic on his locksmith blog as well and there have been many topics popping up on the island locks forum about the nationals constantly ripping off unsuspecting customers. I thought I would throw in my two cents worth as well. It’s no secret that I despise ALL the national locksmith company’s in the UK. You can also read Ricks post here http://midlandlocks.angelfire.com/blog/

What people seem to have forgotten about is that nationals have been around advertising there locksmith and door repair services in all of our local areas for years before Google came along. They used to and still do advertise in the paper directory’s taking out huge multiple adverts that the proper local guys probably can’t afford. Now with Google AdWords these companies are bidding huge amounts to get that holy grail which is the top spot in the Google search results. The nationals have massive budgets for their advertising campaigns and quite literally push out all the local locksmiths. There are 10 Google AdWords spots up for grabs on the first page of Google, I just did a quick search for my own area and the top 7 of these spots are taken by nationals. It’s reported in some areas that nationals are bidding up to £15 per click while the average local locksmith may be able to go up to around £5 per click which is still very expensive and over the period of a month quickly builds up to a frightening amount of money.

When you are new to the trade it’s very difficult to get your business going and it’s only getting more difficult with every year that passes because the number of locksmiths has risen ridiculously over the past few years. Also because of the internet there’s a lot of handy men and people from different trades i.e. window fitters and upvc door installers who can easily find out how to do certain lock jobs in just a few clicks of a mouse. Obviously with these factors combined there’s less work about than there used to be. To gain extra work a lot of new comers are left with very little choice but to go and work for a national company on a sub contract basis, sometimes it’s either work for them or go out of business. Most national locksmiths rely on this fact because a lot of the more experienced well established locksmiths will tell them to get lost because they are not prepared to work for such a small percentage.

Avoid National Locksmiths

So here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t work for national locksmiths

1, They rip people off and charge extortionate amounts compared to a local company

2, Whilst you are busy working for them you are neglecting your own local locksmith business

3, They don’t care about you at all, you are just a number, they are not bothered how far you have to travel and how inconvenient it might be, when you turn a job down because it might be 40 miles away they will stop all your work and give it to the next guy who is also just a number to them.

4, When you have to present the customer with the final extortionate bill it’s you who has to take all the grief from the customer.

5, Whilst you are at the customers address your van is parked outside with your own company name on the side sometimes the customer will believe that it’s you who is ripping them off which obviously is very bad for your own company’s reputation.

6, You will be taking the smallest share of the money for doing all the hard work whilst they sit back and coin it in.

7, Some national locksmiths are reported to be very bad payers meaning you run around doing the jobs for a month and they don’t pay you your share, when you complain they go quite and give you no more work. The work you were getting then goes to somebody else who also will never see a penny of their money either. However this doesn’t apply to all of them some are also reported to be good payers so if your intent on working for them make sure you do your homework first.

8, You are adding to the problem, you can’t complain that there’s no work and then go and work for a national company, they are probably over 50% of the reason that you have no work in the first place.

So that’s just a few reasons not to work for nationals, it would be nice if every locksmith in the country to get together and all agree to stop working for nationals all together but that’s probably never going to happen. Just imagine if no locksmiths sub contracted to these scum bags every single one would probably go bust within a week or two meaning we would all have a hell of a lot more work but whilst people are still willing to work for them they will continue to thrive and ruin local locksmith business all over the country.

 

 

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