How the London locksmith overcharging scam works

This is not a story about being charged £250 instead of £150. The reported cases are an order of magnitude worse than that, and reading the real figures is the fastest way to understand why two minutes of checking is worth doing.

The reported figures

Drawn from reporting by the Master Locksmiths Association, the BBC and the local press, and set out with its sources in what the reported cases actually look like:

• £3,300 for a single lockout.
• £2,209, charged to a customer who found the firm through a sponsored advert claiming 4,500 five-star reviews.
• £2,200 for a “baby lockout” — a parent locked out with an infant, in the one situation where nobody is able to shop around.
• Ten to twenty times the advertised price, in several cases found by a BBC investigation.
• 402 overcharging cases recorded by the MLA in 2025, up 66 percent on 2021.
• A 147 percent rise in complaints in the first quarter of 2026 against the same period a year earlier.

Sit with the third one. A parent locked out with a baby is the least able customer to negotiate in the entire market, and the reported figure is £2,200. The pricing is not tracking the work. It is tracking the desperation.

The mechanism, in one sentence

The trade calls it the 49er. A low-cost search advert — usually £39, £49 or £59 — buys the visit. The real number arrives afterwards.

The step that makes the number stick is the drill. Firms escalate the cost by drilling the lock, which leaves the property insecure and forces you to buy a replacement. Once your lock is destroyed you cannot walk away, cannot get a second quote, and cannot leave your front door as it is.

The drilling is not incompetence. It is the business model. Most standard UK domestic locks can be opened without damage by somebody competent. The stage-by-stage version is in the locksmith overcharging scam, step by step.

The variant that defeats the usual checks

The newest reported version is impersonation: rogue firms borrowing the identity of genuine, long-established traders.

That matters because it breaks the check most people rely on. “They have traded for years” is no longer a safe signal if somebody else is wearing the name.

What still works is verifying at the source rather than in the advert — checking a trade body’s own register instead of a logo on a website, and checking the business on paper. Those checks are on how to check a locksmith.

Why this is not simply illegal

Locksmithing is not a licensed trade in the United Kingdom. Locksmiths are not covered by the Private Security Industry Act 2001 and need no Security Industry Authority licence, which the Master Locksmiths Association confirms directly. There is no register to be struck off and no licence to lose.

That is a political choice, and it can be changed. Which is why the underlying fix is not a better warning page — it is regulation. The report page includes writing to your MP among the routes, because one paragraph describing what happened to you carries more weight than any campaign leaflet.

The two minutes that prevent it

1. Get a total price on the phone, before anyone travels, including parts and VAT.
2. Verify the firm at the source, not in its own advert.
3. Ask whether they expect to open the lock without drilling it, and what would change that.
4. If the number changes when the van arrives, that is the moment to stop — not the moment to pay.

If it has already happened, the money is not always gone. How to report an overcharging locksmith sets out the routes in order.