Update 3:30 11/05/09: Glenn Younger of Grah Safe & Lock, forwarded me this piece from the RiverFrontTimes that details the scam and the charges. It’s a great read. A snippet:
The complaint alleges that telephone dispatchers for Dependable Locks were instructed by managers to quote a price of $54 for a car lockout, while the responding technician was instructed by managers to charge up to $179 once services had been provided.
The telephone dispatchers were instructed to misrepresent or understate the possibility of additional charges above the price quoted. The market rate for a standard car lockout is typically about $60. The locksmiths were instructed to charge significantly more than the price quoted, and significantly more than usual market rates. Technicians use techniques such as accusing the consumer who objects to the overcharge of “theft of services,” threatening to call the police, withholding the customer’s keys or driver’s license, or following the customer to an ATM machine to ensure payment.
The locksmith technicians allegedly are allowed to split the profits of the fraudulently procured locksmith services with the company, typically 50/50 or 60/40, and that the technicians are required to remit the company’s share of the proceeds by regularly purchasing and shipping money orders to the Dependable Locks location in Clearwater.
The affidavit states that Eliyahu Barhanun, David Peer and Moshe Aharoni conspired with the managers of Dependable Locks to implement a scheme to procure overcharges for locksmith services.
On November 4th, US Postal Inspectors stormed Dependable Locksmith’s headquarters in Clearwater, Fl. Dependable has been one of the companies frequently mentioned as it related to the national locksmith scams. The raid was coordinated with authorities in Missouri and apparently more arrests are to made. This is the same company that the Missouri Attorney General charged with “deceiving and overcharging customers in Kansas City” in April of this year. Their BBB report includes an F Rating and numerous complaints and has more the look of a rap sheet than a business review.
Things seem to be looking up in the Locksmith industry and legitimate locksmiths must, for the first time in several years, be seeing a glimmer of hope. It appears that Google is also making progress in their efforts to control and minimize the damage that scammers in this industry have wrought. More on that in a later post.
& to thought that the basis of those mega spammers & rip offers in the last 1.5 years is Google Maps!!! Think how many people suffered from their spams, scams & theft actions.
Thanks for publishing this, Mike!!!!
Just an update- their phone lines are dead in the US but in Canada they are still alive.
Is it the beginning of a new era in the Locksmith field in which the forces of light will rule the industry ?! If it’s depend(able) on Google- it’ll not happen… (that fast!!).
BTW- I started sending Google a super-lists of this companies’ trillion names, DBA, URLs, sites, etc.. 2.5 years ago, nothing helped..
(Mike, I’m sorry I always sounds pessimistic in your blog
)
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 11:48 am
@PureSheer
It is has become a huge, international problem that will take as long, or longer to fix that it did to occur.
Are Dependable’s listing still in Maps? In US? In Canada?
Comment by Mike (1029 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 11:55 am
@Mike
They are still all over the place!! all over the 7 packs & all over the organic results. But their lines in the US are dead.
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
This is great news for everyone in Local Search. Perhaps a few more high-profile busts will deter even more scammers and spammers.
Comment by David Mihm (96 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Based on Puresheer’s comments it could be said that Google might have been the #1 crime aider and abetter of the locksmith’s spams over the past 1.5 to 2.5 years.
I suspect their phone numbers and websites were reached more by searches in Google than from any other source.
Comment by earlpearl (384 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
@earlpearl
You got it!!
& without any costs- site is free by Weebly or others, advertising platform is free (Google Maps, Yahoo Local, etc..). Only salaries & DID (which costs $0.75 per month)
So hilarious
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Nice to finally see some action from the law enforcement side.
No doubt, some of the folks ripped off by ‘Dependable’ found the listings via Google Maps, but locksmith scammers (and other phony ‘local’ businesses) have been placing local sounding name companies/fake addresses/remote call forwarding listings and running myriad ads in print Yellow Pages for years.
It’s not just a Google Maps problem, it’s a data problem created by low RCF costs coupled with publishers willing to sell out users for the right price. BTW, these listings appear to get tagged with zip codes based on the local exchange portion of the numbers (even without addresses) by phone number publishers.
The big data providers pick up the junk since it’s marked like real local info – and then further spread the pollution.
Little will change as long as the pipeline creating and feeding the data resolves to clean it up.
Comment by Cathy (34 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
Cathy has a great point about the complete food chain is polluted top to bottom and there is not real way to tell virtual from real any more.
The problem is that Google by virtue of how they have designed their clustering algo, sweeps ALL this stuff up, to some extent validates it and most definitely amplifies it. Giving what used to be a mostly local problem, a national platform.
Comment by Mike (1029 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 3:46 pm
Will definitely be forwarding this article to Glenn, my honest locksmith client, Mike. I bet he already knows, though.
Comment by MiriamEllis (362 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 4:25 pm
@Miriam
He’s well updated with the details. Saw it in his blog..
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
Have to agree with Cathy regardign the entire food chain.
This goes back to the break up of Ma Bell. Phone companies required to share their lists, and all the directories that get the lists publish them as if they were all good.
I believe that the other shoe to fall will be insiders at the phone companies, or the phone company software provider Amdocs. The new phone listing just all came to fast to be generated normally. In one weeks time thousands of new numbers.
The cautionary tale for Google, Yahoo and others is that all data is not created equal.
They can not just publish things without scrubing first. Google is,at it’s heart, just a big directory.
We reamin hopeful!
Comment by Glenn Y (18 comments) — November 5, 2009 @ 5:07 pm
[...] Federal Bust of Dependable Locksmith in Florida Strikes at Heart of National Locksmith Scams, Mike Blumenthal [...]
Pingback by SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 5, 2009 — November 5, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
Mike the vid here starts AUTOMATICALLY and we can’t turn it off during the up front advert part…
a real irritation to me at least….specially when I want to re-read this one!
Jim
Comment by Jim Rudnick (36 comments) — November 6, 2009 @ 10:54 am
I struggled with that and I agree…I looked the code but couldn’t figure out how to shut it up….you have to listen to the ad and then pause it…
Anyone know their embed commands better than I that can suggest a way to keep it but keep it quiet?
Comment by Mike (1029 comments) — November 6, 2009 @ 10:59 am
Which one is Dependable locksmith? Are they the same as Millenium Locksmith, Absolute Locksmith, Complete Locksmith, 1800 Locksmith?
Comment by Paul (9 comments) — November 12, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
@Paul
The ones you’ve mentioned & many more..
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — November 14, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
We’ve been working with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office over the past, I don’t know, six months. I reveiced a call from them last tuesday (November 17th). They told me that they have just filed a lawsuit against dependable locks as well. And I don’t know if it’s related or not, but in the last three weeks, I’ve received 5 calls for car lock outs…my first five in probably 8 months. I’m glad that the wheels are finally turning, and that these guys are under them.
Comment by Paul (9 comments) — November 20, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Paul
That’s great to hear!
Comment by Mike (1029 comments) — November 20, 2009 @ 11:38 am
Mike asked: “Are Dependable’s listing still in Maps? In US? In Canada?”
Maybe Dependable Locksmith Inc isn’t. But the several other scamming locksmith companies are. Just look at the Sponsored Links saying “$25 Locksmith” and “$29 Locksmith” if you want to know an idea on who some of the other remaining scammer-locksmith companies are.
How much does Google profit by those sponsored links?
Comment by zossimos (3 comments) — December 17, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
I have not followed up on the spammy listings in Maps….I have heard that Google has done a reasonably decent job of late at removing them but I don’t know that first hand.
Google takes a somewhat hands off approach to Adwords but i am sure that they would step in if there were reports of abuse there.
Comment by Mike (1029 comments) — December 17, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
Depandable’s sites, listings, ads, phone #s, call centers, etc.. are alive & kicking. They are operating out of the states.
Google cleaned the Maps good (I’d scored it 6.5 out of 10). PPC is still widely polluted.
NO company in the industry charging $25/ $29 for the service, neither do Dependable (if you know what I mean).
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — December 17, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
Oh,
& Google is doing good money from that in Adwords & learning even more from that in the Maps.
Comment by PureSheer (63 comments) — December 17, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
PureSheer wrote: “NO company in the industry charging $25/ $29 for the service, neither do Dependable (if you know what I mean).”
No the “$25 Locksmith” and “$29 Locksmith” stuff is just their “service fee”. It’s deceptive advertising.
As Google reacted to an Attorney General who reacted some years after people started reporting this stuff, I wouldn’t expect Google to catch on to the deceptive Sponsored Links any time soon. You have to call the people to know that they’re screwing customers. You can’t judge just by what their spamming strategy is, or by whether their address is a brick-n-mortar shop or not.
I don’t know if Dependable is alive and kicking. But I do know there are several other companies out there. They’re not just the long lists of phone numbers with weird business names and fake addresses. They’re also moneyed-enough to buy full page ads in the yellow pages, and sponsored links on Google. Those are the guys still taking the most calls from the most customers and ripping them off. Via deceptive advertising, not just deceptive price quotes on the phone.
Comment by zossimos (3 comments) — December 19, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
More on the “$25 Locksmith” and $29 Locksmith” ads in Google’s “Sponsored Links”…
If you call any of those companies, you’ll find they are still quoting what Dependable and the spin-offs have been quoting for a long while: “$39 for the service fee, and $15 or more for the labor”. When the customer responds, “But what about the $29 I’m seeing on Google?” then they drop that “service fee” by $10. So now it sounds like at least you got a $10 break, and it’s still cheaper than “those other locksmiths” (those “expensive guys” that are honestly naming their flat rate… and who are, ironically, actually the much cheaper guys).
Regardless of calling themselves “”$25 Locksmith”, the overall charge is in the end still $100 or more.
People really need to pay more attention to what’s said on the phone. The scammers are never going away. So it’s up to the consumers to be more pro-active by listening closer and thinking it through. In fact, even these news stories get it wrong. The scammers don’t say $54 and then “overcharge” as the news reporters keep reporting. They say, “$39 for the service fee, and $15 or more for the labor”. That sounds like it adds up to $54 — IF you’re not paying attention to the most important part of what just got said. Which is the “or more” part of it. And most people miss the implication of that, somehow.
Almost daily I get a customer who turns my flat fee of $60 down, because he’s going to go with the “cheaper locksmith” who quoted him, in effect, “Somewhere between $54 and infinity”. Or because he’s going to go with the $25 guy in Google’s sponsored links who quotes him (in effect), “Somewhere between $40 and infinity”.
The scam is easy to avoid. Just get a total price. Don’t deal in approximates. Then hold the locksmith to it (preferably in writing before he touches your car). Last week a guy complained to me, “That other guy I called said it’d be somewhere between $40 and $95!” So, that particular scammer did actually name his full price. Problem was, as the customer himself explained: “I assumed it would just be $40! After all, it’s a Chevy not a Rolls Royce!” So it wasn’t an issue an overcharging so much an issue of misleading the customer. The customer didn’t understand why he’d been given a price range. He was told it had to do with the difficulty of the car, and customers tend to assume that inexpensive cars are the easier cars (which isn’t necessarily true). They are not wanting to show up and assess the car, the way they lead customers to believe. They want to show up and assess YOU. At the very least, they intend to leave with that “service fee” for having just showed up. They have the customer on a recording saying “Yes” to their “$29″ or “$39 service fee” and they think it’s their legal right to collect on that (in spite of the fact that nothing else they said was forthright enough to be honest, which I think legally would nullify any agreement made on the phone).
Comment by zossimos (3 comments) — December 19, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
i use to work for this company in riverdale ny and i always complained to management because of the type of complaints we would receive. Management did not care that our techs were ruining peoples cars and homes. i finally quit the company before they moved to florida but this israelie owned company was owned by a bunch of crooks that only focused on how much money that can milk the public. So if a tech ever comes to your house and hardley knows any english you should worry!!!
Comment by me (5 comments) — January 9, 2010 @ 7:36 pm
the owners of this company are in iseal but their famaly and jewish friends run it and treat their employees as if they were in the iseali army or something promoting jewish kids that just come in rite away over poeple that worked for them for a while. hahaha to this company “GOD DOES NOT LIKE UGLY” i’m glad you were finally caught
Comment by me (5 comments) — January 9, 2010 @ 7:40 pm
the funny part was how customers use to think they were calling their local locksmitgh but it was somehow being routed to this office no matter what state,city or town you called from.what a scam!!!!!!!!
Comment by me (5 comments) — January 9, 2010 @ 7:42 pm