How to Avoid Being Ripped Off

There are fraudulent locksmith companies out there. They give a lowball quote and then
increase it when they arrive to a cost that you would not have agreed to had they been forthright from the start.

But don't let that scare you away from locksmiths. If you need the service then you need the service, and it's actually quite easy to find an honest locksmith
in spite of some deceptive advertising in Yellow Pages and Google. Here's my attempt to help the consumer steer clear of dishonest locksmiths.

1
I recommend the locksmiths at the Missouri-Kansas Locksmith Association

Find someone in or near your city on the list of members provided on the MKLA website. These guys are reputable locksmiths -- for membership they must provide references, need at least one positive testimonial from a longstanding and respected member, and are voted on by members that have been representing the best of locksmithing in Kansas City for many years (many of them for decades). No one automatically gets membership for merely paying a fee...

2
Beware of lowball quotes

Often the scam is reported as "overcharging". That's misleading because it's just the end-result, and not the method that the consumer needs to watch for.
"Lowballing" more than anything else is what everyone needs to be aware of.

Lowballing is, according to my dictionary, "offering a deceptively or unrealistically low estimate, bid, etc."

We'd all like to find services at reasonably low prices. Which is fine except that there are liars out there, and so if you "price-shop" with only a care about finding someone cheap then you might inadvertently get a very expensive service instead. And consider that someone's "cheapness" may reflect their skills as well.
I recommend that people care about finding a quality service and not only just a cheap one.

3
Understand "service charges" and "labor charges"

Most locksmiths use these as the basic units in their pricing. Locksmiths separate "service" from "labor" because much of our work is provided at the customer's location and so we need some money for the time and for turning away other work to travel there, and that's the "service charge". The "labor charge" is, of course, for the hands-on labor.

Both the honest guys and the dishonest guys use this system. But there's a subtle but key difference in how they use it.

Honest locksmiths name both the service and labor charge with enough specificity that you have a pretty good idea what you're going to pay to have your lock(s) opened, or fixed, or replaced. It's not an infinitely wide approximation like "$40 or more" or "I'll tell you once I'm there". (Never accept anything like that unless you personally know and deeply trust the locksmith). Sometimes the customer wasn't accurate in her description on the phone; for example, maybe it's five locks that need to be "rekeyed" instead of four. But the charges should have been explained on the phone with enough definiteness that any adjustments on the invoice will make good sense, and there won't be weasel excuses why the cost is ballooning beyond reasonable expectations.

Dishonest locksmiths, on the other hand, abuse the "service charge" and "labor charge" pricing system. They'll name the service charge readily enough. In fact, many frauds advertise it prominently in ads within Google's "sponsored links" (go to Google.com and search "locksmith in (city)(state)" and you'll likely see at least a couple of lowball quotes in the box at the top of the page, and maybe also along the right side). It's a partial price and it's quite low because they're hoping everyone mistakes it for the full price, or at least the larger part of it. But it's neither; it's just bait.

It's a bait-n-switch con. The lowball service charge is "bait" to the lure the customer to phone, and the "switch" is how the labor charge tends to balloon as your dealings with them proceed. While they readily name the service charge, they leave the labor charge vague (any price with "or more" attached to it is much too vague) so it can become far more than you'd have agreed to if only they had the ethical sensibilities to forthrightly name their price. But you finally get the full price only after one or two men arrive at your location.

For lockouts they pretend the labor charge varies according to the difficulty of your car or home lock. But in lockouts the difference between an "easy job" and a "hard job" is only a few minutes, and that hardly deserves a variable price.
My advice is that you only hire locksmiths who will straightforwardly name a flat fee for a lockout procedure.

So, among dishonest locksmiths, a lockout might cost "$40 or more depending on (whatever)." They want men on the scene before a final price is given -- not to size up the lock but to size up the customer. And that "or more" can be $50 to $100 more. Or maybe they quote you something that's not infinite but is an overly large range: "$40 to $85 depending on (whatever)". If you hear that, you might rightly suspect that they want $85 and the lower price is only mentioned to abuse your hope for cheap service.

Don't let the lower figure be a distraction. Listen closely to the wording and don't do business with persons who deal in vague approximations. Please apply due skepticism to all claims. Look at Google's Sponsored Links and see "$16 Locksmith" and "$25 Locksmith". Those are only the service charges. Again, they have yet to add their labor charges, probably the "$15 or more depending on your lock" pitch that I've described. And "or more" means the sky is the limit.