Scams
The locksmith overcharging scam, step by step
Complaints rose 147% in a single quarter and doorstep bills have hit £1,800. The full playbook, stage by stage, with the trade body's own red flags and the numbers behind them.
Most locksmiths in London are ordinary tradespeople doing a skilled job for a fair price. This guide is not about them.
It is about a specific, well-documented pattern that consumer groups and trading standards teams have described for years: a low advertised price, a national call centre, a subcontracted van, and a bill that bears no relation to the number you were given on the phone.
Knowing the sequence is most of the defence, because the scam depends entirely on you meeting each stage for the first time while standing in the cold.
The underlying fact that makes all of this possible: locksmithing is not a licensed or regulated trade in the United Kingdom. No qualification is legally required. No register must be joined. No licence can be revoked. Anyone can print a card tomorrow.
How big the problem actually is
This is not a folk tale about one bad night. The trade body keeps count.
- The Master Locksmiths Association recorded 402 overcharging cases in 2025, up 66 percent on 2021.
- Locksmith trade associations reported a 147 percent rise in scam complaints in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025 — the sharpest quarterly spike on record.
- Documented individual doorstep bills have reached £1,800, £2,209 and £3,300 for routine emergency callouts.
- A BBC investigation found several cases where the bill was ten to twenty times the advertised price.
- The MLA reports final charges of over £500 on simple lockouts that were advertised at £39 to £59.
The pattern even has a name inside the trade: the “49er”, after the £39, £49 and £59 price points used to open the conversation.
Set against those figures, the twenty minutes this page takes to read is well spent. The individual cases are collected in what the reported cases actually look like.
Stage 1 — The advert that is not a locksmith
You search, and the results are dense with local-sounding names: a borough in the title, a London phone number, sometimes a stock photograph of a van.
Frequently this is a lead-generation site or a national call centre. It has no locksmiths, no vans and no workshop. It takes your call, sells or dispatches the job to whoever is nearest, and takes a cut.
The signs, before you dial:
- No street address anywhere on the site, or an address that is a mailbox.
- The same site content repeated with a different borough name swapped in.
- Dozens of “locations” covering the whole of London with no premises in any.
- Reviews with no detail, no dates and suspiciously similar phrasing.
Stage 2 — The price that is not a price
You call. You are quoted something that sounds reassuring — “callout from £39”, or “£49 plus parts”.
Both phrasings are doing enormous work.
“From” is a floor, not a price, and there is no ceiling attached to it. “Plus parts” is where the entire bill is hiding: a lock cylinder worth fifteen pounds can appear on the invoice at ten times that, and you agreed to “parts” in the abstract before you knew what they were.
You will also notice a reluctance to give a total. The wording is practised: the engineer will assess on arrival. That is the tell. A locksmith who does this work every week can give you a realistic total for a standard lockout over the phone.
Stage 3 — The person who arrives
Often not the company you rang, and not always identifiable at all. Sometimes an unmarked vehicle, sometimes no ID, sometimes a first name only.
This matters more than it seems, because if you cannot establish who did the work and which trading entity you contracted with, pursuing the money afterwards becomes far harder.
Stage 4 — The drill
This is the heart of it.
Most standard UK domestic locks can be opened without damage by someone with the right tools and training. Non-destructive entry is the normal professional outcome for a simple lockout.
Drilling changes the economics entirely. Now the lock is destroyed, so you must buy a new one, and you must pay to have it fitted, and you have no choice about either, because you cannot leave your front door without a lock in it.
Occasionally drilling is genuinely necessary — a high-security lock, a broken mechanism, a snapped key deep in the barrel. But an immediate reach for the drill on an ordinary door, with no attempt at anything else, is the single clearest warning sign in the trade.
What to say, before the tools come out: “Can this be opened without drilling? If not, tell me why, and tell me the new total before you start.”
Stage 5 — The number changes
The work is done. Your door is open. And the figure is now four, five, six times what you were quoted — with a story attached. The lock was “anti-drill”. It was “a specialist mechanism”. There was a “high-security upgrade”. The night rate “was on the website”.
The timing is not accidental. You are being asked to negotiate after the leverage has gone, when you are exhausted, and when the alternative on offer is a scene on your own doorstep at two in the morning.
Stage 6 — The pressure to pay in cash, now
Cash, immediately, no itemised invoice, or an invoice with a single line reading “emergency locksmith services”.
Cash leaves no trail, no chargeback, no Section 75 claim, and nothing to take to your bank. That is the point of asking for it.
Three warning signs people never think to check
Impersonating a genuine, long-established firm
Reported in south-west London in February 2026: rogue operators running the same bait-and-switch while borrowing the name and reputation of a real local firm that has traded for years.
This breaks the usual advice, because you can check a genuine company and then ring somebody else entirely. What still works: find the number yourself from the company’s own site or the MLA directory rather than from a sponsored advert, and ask on the phone exactly which company is attending — then check the van and the ID against that answer.
And treat enormous review counts as a warning rather than a comfort. One reported victim found a firm through a sponsored advert claiming 4,500 five-star reviews, and was charged £2,209. Genuine local locksmiths have tens or hundreds of reviews, spread over years, with some lukewarm ones among them.
Beyond the sequence above, the MLA’s own guidance flags several claims that are straightforwardly false, and one payment trick that can keep costing you after the van has gone.
“Police approved” or “Police recommended”
The police do not approve or recommend locksmiths. There is no such scheme. Any company claiming it is either confused about Secured by Design — which certifies products, not locksmiths — or lying to you outright.
“You can claim this back on your home insurance”
Sometimes true, frequently not, and said far too confidently by people who have never seen your policy. It is used to make a shocking figure feel survivable at the moment you are being asked to agree to it.
Never let this claim move you past a price you are unhappy with. Check the policy yourself, afterwards, calmly.
Continuous Payment Authority — the one that keeps taking
This is the most dangerous item on the list and almost nobody has heard of it.
A Continuous Payment Authority (CPA) is a permission set up against your card that allows a company to take further payments later. It is not a direct debit and it is not covered by the same protections.
If you paid a locksmith by card and something felt wrong, ring your bank and ask whether a continuous payment authority was set up. Use those exact words. You are entitled to cancel a CPA, and your bank must action that request.
Do not wait to see whether more money disappears.
How to break the chain
Each stage has a cheap counter, and any one of them is usually enough.
- Before you call — check for a real address and a real trading name. See how to check a locksmith is genuine.
- On the phone — ask for the total including callout, labour, parts and VAT, and ask them to text it. Refusal to write a number down ends the call.
- On arrival — ask for a name and the company they are working for. Note the vehicle. A photograph of the van is not rude, it is a record.
- Before work starts — confirm the texted figure still stands, and ask whether they intend to drill.
- At payment — pay by card, insist on an itemised invoice, and keep the old lock and the new packaging.
If it has already happened to you
We have a full step-by-step escalation route on a separate page — how to report an overcharging locksmith — covering your bank, Trading Standards, the Advertising Standards Authority and the MLA complaints form. The short version:
You are not without options, and it is worth acting quickly.
- Do not pay cash under pressure. Offer card payment. Do not sign a blank or vague job sheet.
- Keep everything — the invoice, the parts, texts, call records, photographs.
- Know the legal position. Under UK consumer law a service must be performed with reasonable care and skill, and where a price was not agreed in advance, only a reasonable price is payable. An invoice is a claim, not a verdict.
- Contracts agreed at your door may also carry cancellation rights, though urgent work you specifically requested is treated differently. This is worth getting advice on rather than guessing.
- Get help. Contact Citizens Advice, who advise on the dispute and pass reports to Trading Standards.
- Call your bank about a chargeback, or a Section 75 claim if you paid by credit card. Do it promptly — these routes have time limits.
- Report it. Even when you cannot recover your own money, a report is what eventually builds a case against a repeat operator.
The one-line version
A real locksmith will give you a total in writing before they travel and will try to open your door without breaking it. Anyone who will not do the first, and does not attempt the second, has told you what kind of company they are.