CRIMINALS
Our front door mechanism jammed late on Christmas Day and we called this company after several local ones didn’t answer. The locksmith called Mono who has already been name-checked in these reviews arrived within 20 minutes. He immediately advised us that the mechanism had failed and needed replacing. He quoted a figure which I thought was £69 + VAT so I agreed. He disappeared to ‘find the part from a colleague’, assuring me it would only take him 10 minutes. Nearly 40 minutes later he returned, by which time it was nearly 1 am. He replaced the mechanism and then announced the lock itself was faulty, rattling it around to demonstrate that it was loose. On his phone he showed me a ‘high-security’ lock priced at £465. When I said that was far too much and I just needed to get the door secure for the night and get to bed, he quoted me £250 instead. I declined again but he then produced an invoice for replacing the mechanism for over £1200. I was absolutely distraught, realising I would have no option but to pay this guy to secure our house for the night (and get him off our property). He became aggressive, saying I had already agreed to the price. Probably sensing I had realised what he was up to, he announced he would give me a ‘discount’ since it was Christmas and produced a new invoice for £1048 with the new mechanism coming to £699 + VAT (at that point he even offered to install the new ‘high-security’ lock free of charge).
We have subsequently had the work checked by a local locksmith we have used previously who advised that the lock could have been secured for the night by simply oiling the old mechanism (which we kept), but nonetheless he quoted a replacement at £95 + VAT. He showed us that the guy had deliberately inserted the wrong screw to the lock so that it was loose and rattled. It took him seconds to install the correct screw (for which he did not charge us). He was genuinely appalled but not surprised at our treatment by these scammers- sadly the story is all too familiar to those in the trade.
This company is nothing but criminals who are praying on vulnerable people and know they can simply make up ridiculous prices that people will pay because they are in a desperate situation. Utterly shameful.
