Locksmithing and Security

When I built the workshop at the bottom of the garden (OK, it’s a shed), I’m glad to say I went a bit over-the-top insulating it. I was going to line the walls with pegboard so I put polystyrene foam and aluminium foil behind the pegboard. By the way, holes are darned expensive: pegboard is more than three times the price of plain hardboard. I couldn’t see any way of doing the same kind of thing for the roof, so I gritted my teeth and stumped up the money for the proper thing—foil-coated polyfoam.

The trouble is I should never have let the cat watch Pinocchio. When I’m working down there, he fancies coming in and helping. Once he’s in, however, and sees the reality of filing things, he quickly gets bored and wants to go out. Then, only having a slightly better memory than a goldfish, he wants to come in again. And so it goes; along with my nice warm air.

I thought I’d heard of most scams. But here’s one from the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) scamwatch pages that I hadn’t heard of.

You get into your car in a car park and start it up. You reverse out of your space and see a note stuck to the rear window. You get out to retrieve the notice, the scumbags then jump into your car—engine running and unlocked—and off they go.

So if you’ve just got into your car and are moving off, don’t be persuaded to stop and investigate any little peculiarities. Wait until you’re a good distance away before you investigate. If you must stop just after you’ve moved off, be very careful. Have a good look around from the inside with the doors locked first. If you must get out, try to wait until a family is in the vicinity and then switch off the engine, take your keys and take your purse.

I had already heard of another much scarier scam. You start to reverse, there’s a scream, you stop and leap out only to find someone under the rear of your car. But you didn’t hit them. They were hiding; they screamed first and then slid into place after you stopped.

We have just decided that we are no longer accepting jobs from a certain area of Putney in south-west London. There are so many barriers and “no entry”s, that unless you have a specialist map you cannot get to a significant proportion of the residents. And, of course, your customer is necessarily always going to be included in that percentage. And of course that map isn’t available to tradespeople.

I have a brother-in-law who is a topologist—I really do—and he agrees that there are certain streets that you cannot reach, and one street where if you do manage to get to it, you can never leave again. (Topology is the branch of mathematics which says a teacup is the same as a doughnut, which can prove the hairy ball theorem—that you can’t comb down the hairs of a hairy ball without creating a cowlick—and which probably started with the proof, long ago, that there was no promenade that would take a walker over each and every one of the seven bridges of Königsberg just once.)

I’m getting a call a day from the same bunch of cold callers. They are the Locksmith Register. They were pests when they were on their own. Now they’re part of BT Customerstreet, which is part of BT Directories. BT Directories bought a whole bunch of pests via their acquisition of web “services” companies such as Ufindus and the original Customerstreet.

If you’re a tradesperson in the UK you may well have received a nuisance call from the same bunch. I’m sure they pester plumbers, decorators, etc. just as badly. They open with “I’m calling from BT and I’m looking for a locksmith/plumber/whatever.” Of course they’re not. They’re looking to sell you website building or “optimization”. And if you take only a short look at the results of a google search on BT Customerstreet, you’ll struggle to find any happy customers; the only positive stuff you will find is BT Customerstreet’s own copious blogs which seem to be trying to crowd the complaint blogs and sites off the front few pages of google searches.

The other very annoying thing is their ignoring of the Telephone Preference Service or TPS. If you haven’t signed up with TPS, you might consider it. It does actually reduce the number of nuisance calls and cold calls that you get. A surprising number–the majority in fact–of telephone marketing and sales companies respect the TPS. But not BT Customerstreet.

Being BT they claim, with near certainty of being half right, that you are already a customer and therefore not covered by the TPS.

Anyway the good news is that the Office of Fair Trading have received several complaints. MPs have received complaints. Trades organisations have received complaints. So maybe something will happen to curb this unpleasant bunch.

If you’ve read the local locksmiths page of the main site, you’ll have read the little rant there about traders and call centres who flood the internet with sites claiming to be local locksmiths. Of course they’re not. They won’t get to in any reasonable time; in fact they won’t get to you at all; they’ll sub the job out to the nearest botcher on their books.

If you actually want a local trader, you’re better off doing a little checking–on the number for example. If it’s not a London number (or your local area code) then they’re not a local locksmith. If there’s only a mobile number, then check the fax number. Check the coverage claimed. If it’s every postcode in London and the home counties, for example, then they’re not your local locksmith. If they haven’t provided a geographic address on their website, then they’re flouting the Electronic Trading law.

This extra little rant was because I just spotted a “Clapham Locksmith” web site that does give a geographic address, but it’s in North London in Muswell Hill! Now that’s the other side of London from Clapham; and London is quite a big city.

I’ve had two weeks where almost every job suffered some kind of bugger factor and required a followup visit. Nobody’s fault; these things just happen; and they come in waves. You’ll have a week where you open five fire-safes and then you won’t see another for six months. You fit eight London bars in as many days, double your stock of them and then don’t get another request for weeks. But hey – the odd thing would be if there were no odd things.

Today, however, the gods were smiling. Initially it didn’t look good. It was pouring down and the door that needed opening had a lever lock and was set in an exposed wall. However I’d just bought a new, lined and hooded, hi-viz jacket that was still enjoying its waterproof flush of youth. I managed to park the van right outside, so I only needed to rust one expensive pick at a time. It turned out to be an uncurtained lock, which means that it could be picked in the traditional (easy) way. However–even better–the xxxxxxx keys which had been having a bad run and had not opened anything in months did the job.

Then I saw that the retaining screws had been completely burred over, meaning the lock wasn’t going to come out, and I’d have to make a return visit with the left-handed drill bits to drill the screws out (I’d neglected to put them back after using them in the workshop). But no. When I gave the screws an experimental whack with the sacrificial chisel the heads broke right off they were so rusty; and then they turned out not to be the retaining screws at all. Having wiped a cumulo-nimbus-worth of rain off my glasses, I saw they were just faceplate screws, with decent retaining screws underneath. And it wasn’t the old nasty Yale lever lock with plastic “springs” that I initially thought it might have been–was just weathering making it look so old–it was a newish Yale lever lock with a drop-in replacement available.

And the establishment turned out to be an inn. I was served a bowl of goulash, half a loaf of bread and a tankard of ale, by the fire, as well as my fee of course. (The tankard was small and it was the last job of the day.) Tra-la-la.

I’ve vowed a few times in the past, never again to do work for a landlord who isn’t going to be at the premises and forking out hard cash.

Yesterday I relented and agreed to go and fix a tenant’s lock and then to phone the landlord for a debit card payment. So I fixed the lock (unfortunately there were no parts needed which gives you at least some kind of hold over them); and then I phoned the landlord. No reply. Right I thought: I’m staying in this guy’s kitchen until she answers — all day if necessary. However the phone was answered on the third attempt. Card details were duly given. “Transaction declined.”

“Do you have another card?”, I said. “Look”, says she, “I’m in the Bahamas and about to board a plane. I’ll ring you and pay when I get back.” “Click”.

Sobbing quitely, the locksmith dejectedly shuffles back to his van. A passing gutter sweeping lorry’s brushes seem to be chanting, “Sucker. Sucker.”

The bad news is that the internet showed everyone and their aunt how to open your traditional locks.

The other bad news is that an unbelievably idiotic cylinder design became a European standard (the “Euro” profile cylinder).

The good news is that lock manufacturers have been spurred into creating some truly fearsome high-security locks, dealing with lock pickers and earlier idiotic lock designers.

The bad news is that it won’t be any good calling a locksmith to get you in if you’ve lost your keys to one of the next generation of locks. So if you do fit high-security locks give a spare key to a good friend who never goes out and never goes on holiday.

Not much to report, I’m afraid. Other than if there is a DESIGNER then HE/SHE/IT is pretty unintelligent. The gout I’ve suffered occasionally in my big toe seems to have moved on to my knee. This despite my having already given up the port and the pate de foie gras. So I haven’t been out much.

Unlike most animals we lack the enzyme to metabolize uric acid so it crystallizes in our joints. And the crystals are sharp. Believe you me.

So, along with male nipples, wisdom teeth, the human eye and many other examples, this tells me that if there is a divine designer, she (or he) is an incompetent one. The eye is an excellent example, as it’s sometimes held up to be evidence for the opposite position. But the eye has evolved separately in more than one evolutionary line; and in one line the nerves leave via the back of the retina. But in the human line, the nerves leave the retinal cells in the forward direction. In other words the light has to travel through the nerve bundles before it gets to the retina. In other words we humans’ vision is much worse than it could be.

Of course I’ve given up debating any of this with my delusional friends as by definition they are not interested in evidence or logic.

(And I was joking about the foie gras. While I’m happy to eat animals that have had a pleasant life, I’m not willing to eat animals who’ve been deliberately tortured.)

If ever you get into your Citroen Berlingo, slam the door closed and then hear someone shooting at you, I can report that it probably wasn’t a pistol shot but the sound of one of the front suspension coil spring shuffling off its mortality.

They are known for it apparently. Suddenly — crack, and it’s in pieces. Citroen even had a recall. Ah, you suppose: to replace the coil springs. No. To fit a cup so that when they go, they find it a tad more difficult to stab into your tyres!