"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message
...
I've never done one. And it's been years since I read any
articles in the locksmith magazines I get. I wouldn't want
to try and answer specifics. I'd be sure to get it wrong.

Thanks for not guessing! (-;

FWIW, I read an article a while back that said out-of-town referral
companies were gaming Google and were "muscling in" on the city locksmith
trade by implying they were local when they were really an hour or more
away. They did it by buying telephone numbers in different areas of the
city to give them recognizable exchanges that people would call believing
they were in that very area. The catch was that they were all remote call
forwarded to the one location the guy had in town that sometimes was very
far away. I believe I read it in the SF Chronicle when checking on whether
they really could pass a law making baby weenie whacking (circumcision)
against the law. Now that's really nanny-state thinking.

Anyway that was a few months ago and when I went to the Yellow pages tonight
to call a locksmith (as I believe you suggested!) I saw a suspicious series
of ads and realized I was probably seeing the same thing in the Yellow Pages
that article described: One locksmith that was working hard to appear that
he was local and close by to answer the call when he really wasn't. That's
close to fraud, IMHO, and just shows you have to know what questions to ask.

I always ask call center people what country there are in. Many refuse,
some are proud to say (mostly India), more are saying "America" than there
used to be and some don't understand any question that is not on their menu.
If they fail that test, I ask directly "Are you located in America?" When
you introduce a language complication into an already difficult technical
support situation, it almost never gets any better.

--
Bobby G.