Complaint Review: Always Ready Locksmith

I chose Always Ready when I was locked out of my apartment in September 2006 because their full-page ad in the Verizon yellow pages stated that they had a location a few blocks from me. Later Jamie, a supervisor with the firm, refused to say where on North 3rd St. in Harrison, NJ, they were located. She gave me the address of P.O. Box 660011 in Fresh Meadows, NY.

On the phone I was told that there would be a service charge of $69, plus $95 for a lock. My actual bill was $725 plus tax for a total of $770. Aaron, the locksmith who came, misrepresented a deadbolt as first a Gard-brand lock and then as a Guard Secuity. It was actually a no-name lock, expect for the obscure "Penn Reading" stamped on the cylinder. Aaron's charge of $450 for the Model 206B Mul-T-Lock was about double the suggested retail price and what other locksmiths I spoke to subsequently would charge. Jamie boasted
that my dispute over the bill with Citi Cards would fail and she was right.

While in the kitchen as Aaron worked I heard a loud noise. Later I found he had created a dent on the outside of the door and 2-1/2 and 3/4-inch marks, apparently when his drill slipped. Also, I did not like the way Aaron looked over my shoulder to see the access code I entered to open the front door of my building.

I contacted the NJ Attorney General's Locksmith Advisory Committee in March 2007 and was told that work on a law had begun in 1985 and a law signed in 1998, but regulations were still being written. The civil servant I spoke to said that the yellow pages refused his committee's request that a license number be required before an ad is placed. The October 2007 Verizon book has another full-page ad from Always Ready. How flagrant and how long-standing do abuses have to be before this company is brought to justice?

Edward
Harrison, New Jersey
U.S.A.