AUTO LOCKSMITHS
Some Reflections on Wise Buying ( and other skills )
by Vic Southern
» JUST ABOUT EVERY DAY WE hear of some poor soul who was swindled out of his / her life savings by a conman . Just this past week I have had two phishing emails attempting to get me to click onto attacks on my PayPal account and my Amazon Prime account . There is no end to them , and we haven ’ t even touched on the thousands of ways in which some crook gets hold of someone else ’ s bank details . Overwhelmingly though the most errors are made in the belief that there is a ‘ free lunch ’, an apparently great bargain which ends up as a costly disaster .
John Ruskin wrote “ It ’ s unwise to pay too much , but it ’ s worse to pay too little . When you pay too much , you lose a little money - that ’ s all . When you pay too little , you sometimes lose everything , because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do .”
In our industry these come up as keys or remotes which are very , very cheap ( and very , very poor quality ), cheap machines and devices , which have no back-up , no worthwhile warranty , and a built-in assured obsolescence within a short period of a year or so . We see machines costing $ 2000 or $ 3000 from China measured against better known products with local back-up and repairs that cost perhaps twice that . Of course , by the time they are landed here and import charges paid the bill is quite different but then many such suppliers will happily provide a false value invoice so that the buyer here pays only £ 6 in duty instead of £. Of course , sometimes no product arrives at all .
There are some fantastically good suppliers in our industry with local back-up and support in every way but it costs a little to have that assurance that what you buy is fit for purpose . There we come across another matter ; our commercial laws give buyers huge rights if the product is deficient . Good luck with trying to enforce that with a hole-in-thewall supplier 5000 miles away . Would you buy a van on that basis ?
Consider the reality . The cheap one costs £ 2500 and the premium one £ 5000 . Then let us assume that El Cheapo will last five years so it costs £ 500 a year or about £ 2.50 a working day . In contrast El Magnifico will cost £ 5 per working day and will definitely last the pace .
You might not have the cash available but if you have three years solid trading you will probably be able to get a lease and on the current silly low interest rates that £ 5000 machine will cost you just over £ 5 a day on a 5-year lease . Try getting lease finance on a self-import .
We quite frequently come across locksmiths who have troubles cutting some key or the other ; the cut is too deep or too shallow or is ragged or takes a long time or breaks cutters . 9 times out of 10 we find that is not a key from one of the reputable firms but the
‘ There are some fantastically good suppliers in our industry with local back-up and support in every way but it costs a little to have that assurance that what you buy is fit for purpose ’
cheapest one imaginable with the metal being any old alloy - not brass - and the key too thick or too thin . How much of that can you afford ? How much did you “ save ?
Another problem we encounter often is that mobile locksmiths who run advanced electronic equipment in their vans but whose constant power supply is inadequate . Fluctuating power does not matter much with a drilling machine or grinder but with computerised equipment it is fatal . We came across a guy in the States who bought a 1kw inverter from just under $ 50 from Walmart but who simply wouldn ’ t believe his problems were that absurdly tiny and erratic power supply . Locally we saw a new locksmith trying to run equipment off a £ 115 1.1kw inverter from Costco – he blew a £ 300 motherboard on the first day .
Finally , ask yourself who can you speak to if there is a machine or device technical problem or a key quality issue and who will sort that out . That is the real question . Great back-up is priceless . Beyond price .
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SEP / OCT 2020
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