Locksmithing Blog

I have a fairly open policy on my Skype and IM programs. I tend to allow the requests to join my list, and then work out who it is afterwards. Sometimes they won’t say, so I de-list them, and I’m careful to mark “untrusted” names so I don’t wind up with too many, uh… weirdos?

There’s a reason for this. I’ll not name names, but I just had a message pop up from a chap who totally thought I was someone else, with the same name, in China. He added me months ago, and, as usual, I allowed and marked as unknown. So I was a little suprised when he just asked a question about a large and probably secret trade deal to me, without any preamble or opening. So now I know a secret. While I didn’t do anything silly, like lead the guy on, I know enough people who would do that sort of thing, and there are actually quite a few websites devoted to things like social engineering attacks, where people use small items of information to gain credibility and then exploit the person they are dealing with. I’m guessing that if I was after info on this rather large deal, I could have easily lead the guy on, since he already thought I was someone else.

I’ve also had a similar thing happen on Hotmail, back in the days when the internet was young, as IT useage policy was “Don’t eat or drink at the computers.” I somehow ended up on this list of joke emails and occassional non-joke messages from someone in the US military. I’m fairly sure it was a shared surname and initial. The jokes were good, so I did nothing, until one day a report marked “Confidential” arrived! I can only imagine the high jinks that could cause today!
Be sure who you send things to on the internet!

Hopefully, the comments issue has been solved, and the “human test” should be working now. Sorry I took so long to realise there was a fault.

The First Post is an online daily web newspaper, and I’m quite taken with it. And this made me laugh.

Bad customer service seems, more and more, to be the norm. We at Lancashire Locksmiths / Discreet Security Solutions find this very sad, and we try our best to be there on time, or as fast as possible. Sometimes, we are late or slower than we would like due to traffic or other difficulties, but we always do our best. Once we are on site, we do what we do as fast as we can, and, generally, we leave the customer happy at the combination of low price and high service they get. Being friendly and polite helps.

When you call us out to gain entry, you will, most times, be speaking to the locksmith immediately (me), or within a few seconds, at least 90% of the time. If I’m busy, then you will get called back, or a useful message or an appointment made, there and then. And we won’t mess you about or give you costs that seem low because I don’t mention the costs of the hardware, or the VAT (or even both!) I’ll give you a fair price, and, almost all the time, that will be exactly what you pay.

It is swings and roundabouts, because for every job that takes only 5 minutes on site, there is another that will take far longer. In the end, it really does depend on the lock, rather than the locksmith! But I won’t sting you if it takes me longer than I thought it would, because you are paying for my skill. Hopefully, you won’t take it badly if I open your door in a few minutes, for the same reason, you are paying for my skill.

All jobs, all work, should be done with pride and skill, and, perhaps sadly, I do have an eye for perfection, so sometimes things take a little longer. But I feel it is worth it in the long run, and feedback from customers? They feel the same way. Which is part of why we get repeat business (of the good kind!) and work via positive word of mouth. And nothing feels nicer than that.

A lot of people might have been confused by this, I know I was. If you are using Grisoft’s AVGFree version 7.1, you’ll have seen various pop-ups telling you that it was being stopped. However, what that meant was that the product support for 7.1 was being stopped, and that you should upgrade to the 7.5 version, which is the same, but better, and still supported.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/downloads-free75cnv/lng/us/tpl/v5 is the main downloads page. Get updated! And thanks Grisoft, for keeping us safe(r) on the internet.