No matter what trade or profession you choose to work with, and there are lots of them, you’ll always find good, adequate and bad workmanship, rogues, amateurs and professionals, the cheap, the affordable and downright overpriced and of course everyone wants to avoid having a poor job done, getting overcharged for substandard work or getting totally ripped off by a rogue trader but for some professions and industries this is easier said than done.
Let’s take a driveway installer for example, someone who lays block paving or pattern imprinted concrete for a living, you’ll find that this type of company will generally have a decent quality website showcasing their work – if they don’t then this is a bad sign and you should really avoid this company – and from this you will be able to see the quality of workmanship you’re going to get from them as well as a feel for how professional they are. Do beware of stock photos though and make sure the photos are of actually jobs and not simply lifted from other websites. A reverse image search is a great tool…
It’s also a fact that most businesses who have a decent online presence will also have a Google business account/page – once called Google Maps – where you’ll be able to see where they are actually based and even read genuine reviews from real customers, unlike reviews you read on a company’s own website which can be easily faked and often are.
These same rules will apply to any number of trades and professions such as office window tinting companies who install solar film to office windows to reduce glare on monitors and other equipment and provide an more pleasant and calming working environment and Window, Door and Conservatory Companies who’ll usually have an online gallery full of previous projects to not only showcase the quality of their work but to assist customers with choosing what style of product they want.
However, there are some trades and industries where customers tend to overlook things like quality websites and positive Google reviews choosing to simply contact the company at the top of the search engines and these trades and industries are what are referred to as emergency callout trades and funnily enough these are the trades that are reported to trading standards the most often.
What Trades Are Emergency Callout Trades?
There are many emergency callout trades but the three we’ll focus on today are emergency plumbers, drain companies and emergency locksmiths as these three trades account for over 80% of trading standards complaints in the UK.
So you have water cascading down your walls or coming through your ceiling from a leak in the bathroom or a backed up drain leaking raw sewerage all over your yard or garden, do you start browsing the internet and looking at website design and reviews? Of course not you simply search Google for an emergency plumber or Drain Company and book the one who answers the telephone and can come out to you today.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of professional Plumbers and Drain Companies offering a first rate service at affordable prices but unfortunately the rogue side of this industry is growing year on year due to things like cheap social media advertising and the availability of inexpensive PAYG mobile phones.
Before the internet and mobile phones become popular in the early 2000’s tradesmen such as plumbers and drain companies always used land lines and a physical address and you found them by looking in the phone book or looking in the now defunct Yellow Pages, This made it harder for rogues and con men to operate and go un-noticed because they soon built up a bad reputation and no one would use them, but nowadays you can rip off a bunch of people and it’s just a simple name change a new £10 sim card for their mobile phone a new ad on social media and they are totally different company off to con more unsuspecting people.
What about the locksmith industry?
At the moment the locksmith industry is saturated with rogues, amateurs and con men, even more so than the plumbing or drain unblocking industry and this is because setting up a an emergency locksmith requires no outlay and no training, yes that’s correct, no training and this is because rogue locksmiths target people who have been locked out of their home or office and it takes very little skill to turn up with a hammer and drill and simply break into someone’s home or premises.
A professional locksmith will have different tools such as manual and electronic lock picks and will usually be able to carry out what’s known as non-destructive entry which is immensely different to having your lock and door frame hammered and drilled by an amateur.
Some locksmiths who claim to be professional and fully trained have also been known to carry out substandard, overpriced work and this is down the lack of regulation and the vastly different locksmith training courses that are available.
Official and Unofficial Locksmith Training Courses
There is an official locksmith training course available, it’s regulated by OFQUAL (The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) and recognised as the most advanced academic and vocational courses within the field of locksmithing and security. It’s run by qualified locksmith with teaching qualification in colleges. You can get more information about the official course here.
This official course is quite in-depth takes around 6 months to complete but because the locksmith industry is unregulated at the moment there are a number of “rogue” locksmith training centres offering 3 and 5 day locksmith training courses, yes that’s days not months or even weeks.
Most people will agree that it is impossible to learn and entire trade, especially something as complex as the locksmith trade, in just 3 to 5 days but these courses are attractive to a lot of people as they promise certification and assure you that after just 3 to 5 you’ll be a fully trained locksmith, of course this certification is not worth the paper it’s printed on and you’ll leave the course with no more knowledge than you would have gained from watching a couple of hours worth of Youtube videos but people fall for these unofficial courses all the time and the companies running them, are not breaking any laws, not yet anyway…
So for the locksmith industry does the blame lay solely on the amateur locksmith? Or are these unofficial locksmith training centres to blame?
Summary
Whether you’re looking for home improvements such as new windows, doors, or a new conservatory or you looking to create a more pleasant working environment in your office by having solar window film fitted always look at the quality of the company’s website and check out online reviews before committing to using a certain company.
With emergency callout trades especially the locksmith industry you need to be very careful that you are not calling on the services of an untrained amateur or a rogue trader. Try to get a price over the phone – rogues and conmen are reluctant to do this – and where locksmiths are concern asked whether they have OFQUAL certification.