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Got burned on a $65 locksmith in Ballston, please learn from my mistake
Last month I locked myself out of my apartment near Ballston Quarter and called the first locksmith that popped up online. They quoted me $35 on the phone but when the guy showed up he claimed the lock was "high security" and jacked the price up to $65, then asked for cash only. It took him 45 minutes to pop a basic deadbolt and he scratched up my door frame pretty bad, which my landlord charged me $40 to fix. Total damage was over $100 and a wasted afternoon I could have spent doing literally anything else. Does anyone here have a local locksmith they actually trust, or should I just start hiding a spare with a neighbor?
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beth_hunt19d ago
Ugh, that cash only thing is such a red flag and I've read that it's a classic scam move so they can skip the paper trail and disappear. I saw a post warning about this exact thing on a DC renters group, where folks said to never call the first Google result because those are often lead services that just farm your call out to whoever pays. Hiding a spare with a neighbor is free, so maybe do that and keep a real locksmith's number saved just in case.
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