Complaint Review: CHAMPION LOCKSMITH - LIBERTY LOCKSMITH - NEW YORK CITY New York

The company has been in business for 25 years and is not a fly by night company. Many locksmith companies that operate out of NYC are being investigated by the FBI because they ARE ripping people off in NYC and other markets through out the country. Champion is NOT one of the companies! I have NEVER heard of a locksmith charging $100 for a lockout after a reasonable quote of $45 was given over the phone. NEVER!!!! Please get the story straight!

The Better Business Bureau has received over a thousand complaints about unscrupulous locksmiths that have customers paying a lot more than they bargained for. It's happened to many of us at one time or another, getting locked out of your car or home. While there's no doubt most locksmiths are reputable and provide the rescue you need, there are several companies that really only want your money. When you're locked out of your car or house, you rush to hire a locksmith, and the majority of time you will get a reputable worker at your door, but that's not always the case. "We're hearing from consumers across the country who have been swindled by unethical locksmiths," Alison Preszler, of the Better Business Bureau, said. Story continues belowAdvertisement The Better Business Bureau says they've received more than a thousand complaints, most over the past year or so, about companies that have legitimate sounding names but use local phone numbers with fake addresses. And when you dial, you're transferred to a call center that could be thousands of miles away. "They're not forthcoming at all about where they're located," Preszler said. So they quote you a price and dispatch one of their representatives in your area. "They're very unprofessional. He demands two, three, even four times the amount quoted over the phone and he's not going to let you into your house or car until he gets it," Preszler said. "That's what made me angry," Carol Pintar said. Pintar got locked out of her car while it was running. She was quoted $55 but that didn't get her back behind the wheel. "He said, 'Oh, no. That $55 is just for me coming here. You owe me another $95,'" Pintar said. But she only had $40 extra, which he took. "He opened my door in about two seconds. I knew I was taken to the cleaners. And I thought, 'Oh, man. If they're doing this to me, they're doing this all over,'" Pintar said. The locksmith industry is aware of these questionable companies and says people being overcharged isn't the only problem. "They may tell the consumer that they need new locks and that they're prepared to put in some high security locks in for them and they turn around and put in substandard locks," Tim McMullen, of Locksmiths of America, said. "It's an epidemic. Out of all industries, the locksmith industry should be the one that a consumer knows that they can call and they're going to have somebody that's going to be honest, trustworthy," Jason Gage, a locksmith, said. So, how can you make sure the locksmith you're hiring is trustworthy? The Better Business Bureau says be wary of servicemen in unmarked cars, who don't wear uniforms or present identification. "The Better Business Bureau recommends that you do your research ahead of time and find a reputable locksmith before you find yourself in an emergency," Preszler said. If you're looking for a locksmith, the Associated Locksmiths of America says it can make recommendations for a reputable company in your neighborhood.

I am a former employee of Champion, Liberty etc...trust me it's all run out of the same small office located at 75-20 Astoria Bvld. in Jackson Heights Queens in the Bulova Center building, all phone numbers in every ad go to that office and no place else. I know that everything the rip off report says is true, plus more. However I must also say that much of their work is of good or at least decent quality. If you are a business or residence in most of N.Y.C. or Conn.(except for certain remote areas such as the Hamptons or the far reaches of Suffolk County in Long Island or in places like Litchfield & Tolland) you will most likely get most of what the company promises. Don't ever call for an auto lock out or to have a lost auto key duplicated roadside, you can wait hours for someone if they show up at all. The real duplicitous advertising was in the more recent ads from 2004 until when I last worked for the company around a year ago. These are the ads that the company used as they began trying to expand into the south, in places like Atlanta, Ga., Jackson, Mi., Baton Rouge & New Orleans, La. and a couple of cities in Alabama and Oklahoma. Not only do these ads have the same issue with non existent addresses for offices that are not there, the ads make some claims that they will beat any price and that they have 24hr service and it's always the same price which are simply not true. The reason the company was attempting to expand into other parts of the country was due to the fact after over 20 years in business they now had a lot of competition that had sprung up, which was eating into their customer base and hence the potential profits. From the company's inception in 1981 until around 2000 they had very few competitors that provided this type of locksmith service. It's probably why the company got away with a lot of the less than fair practices and somewhat fraudulent advertising for so long, they were for a while the only name in the yellow book. Furthermore most of the competition that arose was from former employees who used the same model ( even the fake addresses for ads in the yellow books) when they broke away and began their own businesses. I do not offer the reasons as an excuse or a justification for any of the company's practices, it's just a little background info as to how and why they ended up trying to do business in so many other places. The fake addresses are used a lot in advertising, Champion is not the originator of the idea. I don't think it should be done and am glad the company got caught. However it won't stop it. I think I'm writing this so that consumers will be more aware of it and some of the other shady type of advertising companies like Champion participates in to garner business. Paul Mantini was lying when he said he forgot to change the ads. The company never had offices outside of Jackson Heights to the best of my knowledge. The whole sales pitch used on potential customers when they call the yellow page listings revolve around this.In fact those bogus addresses were always used and are still being used now, I'd bet on it. Anyone who doesn't believe it just call the company from any yellow page ad in any state the company provides service and ask whoever answers the question "where are you located?" The company policy was to have the dispatchers first say in response "what type of service do you need?" to discern whether the potential customer needed a walk in type service such as having a key copied. If they did we were told to say we are not a walk in shop we're a mobile service and hang up. The dialogue the dispatchers were compelled to use was designed to find out exactly where the customer was located so the dispatcher could obfuscate about the location of the company and or the technician's whereabouts or even which company we really were and convince the customer to use the service by making him or her think the company was small and local or even an entirely different company. We were also told to never use the company name of Champion or any name they used when we picked up a call, it was always, "Hello Locksmiths, how can I help you?" that was the standard greeting used. This is why the yellow page ads can all have different names (D.B.A.'s doing business as) and addresses and yet most people didn't realize it. Some of the reasons for doing this should be obvious, first most consumers wanted a local operation . Consumers recognize that a local business would likely get there faster in an emergency and would be easier to deal with if the customer had issues with service ( if they needed repeat visits to complete the services or if they weren't happy with the services and wanted to complain, get a refund, have shoddy work redressed etc..). Another reason for so many names and yellow page listings was to gain an edge on getting and keeping potential jobs by the sheer volume of different listings. For example, if you call Champion's N.Y.C. listing and didn't like the price you'd keep going down the listings in the yellow book and call others. Except Champion owns numerous ads with so many D.B.A.'s a customer would call the office from all of these thinking he was speaking with a different company each time. The customer didn't know it was the same company but the dispatcher's would know it was the same customer because of caller I.D.. Dispatcher's would hand the potential customer around from one to the other, even disguising their voices when they had to, they'd change the individual prices on service call fees and opening prices on equipment and services (it always added up to the same price of course) until the customer was either satisfied with the numbers or was so confused he'd finally book a job out of frustration to just get it done. Because the company owned so many ads, names and phone numbers the customers also thought that they were getting a reasonable price since most of the numbers they called were really Champion's and they were of course the same price overall. The different names and numbers also gave the company an edge when they performed poorly in terms of punctuality. If a customer called and canceled when the technician was late they'd call another listing (usually one of Champion's too) and Champion would still do the job and do it when they were ready, except the customer thought it was another company entirely. The office in Jackson Heights has stationary, fax cover letters and technician receipt books with at least 10 different business letter heads. People rarely realized that any of this was happening. When customers were just trying to find out how far away our office or even our technicians were we were instructed to lie. period. Questions such as "how far is your shop from my house, business etc..." were answered with "we are a mobile service and you can't come into the shop." If the customer asked "why can't I find your shop because I'm standing where it supposed to be according to the ad" we said something like" oh, we are in an office in the building and you can't see it from the street." If they asked "how far is the technician from my location now" we were told to say right around the corner or something like it(the managers, especially Paul Mantini, encouraged creativity in the type of lie the dispatcher's used to fit the particular situation)even if the technician was in another state. This was common in Rhode Island where after having all the sub contracted technicians there refuse to provide service for the company the company did not pull the ads or tell customers that there were no local technicians available. The company would simply try to send technicians from Mass. instead of being truthful. It wasn't written in the employee training manual but it was company policy. If a technician was running behind, suddenly refused to do the job, we simply could locate a specific technician or didn't have one available for a while we were told to lie, in order to hold on to the job. One dispatcher who knew the roads in Connecticut well would tell the customers out there the truck broke down a few blocks from the location or that it was stuck in traffic on a road near the customer's location. His favorite lie was that the technician was stuck behind the truck which prunes the foliage from trees along the Merritt parkway. Another favorite excuse frequently used was traffic accidents. We were usually not even allowed to give out technicians names until they were close to the location (unless we were sure a specific tech was coming) because we never knew in some locations who would be available or when. We usually didn't do this in serious emergencies like lock outs and break ins but otherwise it was standard operating procedure. By the way almost all technicians are sub contracted and only a couple of them work just for Champion exclusively. Many locksmiths who work for the company also have their own ads and work for rival services. They also lied to people about this, this however was not always a complete fabrication. Originally even though the techs were all sub contracted many did work for Champion exclusively once. Over time many of these techs were able to afford advertising in the yellow books and also use the internet to promote their own businesses. Some started services just like Champion and hired the same sub contractors we employed. This is in part how people began to find out about some of the less ethical practices being performed in the industry. Imagine a technician who works for more than one company and that each company has several different business names and each one has it's own receipt book with a different name, address and phone number. Now imagine him going to a job, giving the customer a receipt with the wrong company name on it and then the customer has a problem and calls the company phone number on the receipt. Get the picture? When customers specifically asked they lied about the fact the technicians were licensed too. The license isn't required but it obviously made the customers feel more comfortable and most people don't know the license isn't required anyway. What I found most disturbing about the Rip Off Report was that they mention Paul Mantini as the man who runs the company. He was the general manager when I worked there. I don't know if he actually runs the company now, but I doubt it. The man who was in charge of Champion when I worked there was Robin Chen. Paul was just the guy who always seemed to get thrust out into the spotlight for all the unpleasant and unpopular issues the company had to deal with. He's also the only senior manager left in the company that knows anything about locksmith work. I know that Robin Chen was responsible for those fraudulent ads that ran all over the south, he composed most of them. I'm not even positive how much the owner was involved with composing and placing those ads. Anyway I don't feel Robin should be in the shadows any longer. Many of the issues with the ads in the south such as the dubious offering to beat any price can be credited to him. Unless of course Robin had planned to get a tool kit and fly to Atlanta and Jackson to the jobs personally. Although not the stuff about the nonexistent locations listed in the yellow books, that's the owner all the way. Oh yeah Brad knew, do you really think the guy who owned the company didn't know? So did all the senior managers and dispatchers whoever worked there. It wasn't a secret. It wasn't a mistake either, they didn't have offices or technicians at most of the locations originally. A couple of the addresses probably don't even exist. I was told by another dispatcher once that he knew that one of the addresses in N.Y.C. was bogus, he happened to live in that area and knew that street just didn't have that address on it anywhere. If anyone in the states of GA., MS., AL., AR., OK., LA., MA., RI., CT., or N.Y.C. and lower Westchester have had any problems with the company and read this, if you think I can e-mail to; (((ROR redacted))) I will check periodically and help if I think I can. Just remember always let the buyer beware. This doesn't just go on at Champion CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.