I'm surprised that the author made zero effort to find out more from the people who are using lead gen sites to generate trade jobs - the locksmiths who are doing the actual hoodwinking. It seems that they are a critical part of the problem, i.e. if they were honest and quality tradespeople, then the fact that a lead gen site connected them to consumers really wouldn't be much of a problem at all.
The last paragraph in the article talks of scams: a telephone rep offers $49 service to a locked-out homeowner, but when the locksmith shows up he insists on $400. Once he gets paid, he drills out the lock and leaves, with the homeowner now needing a new lock.<p>One possible defensive tactic comes to mind: I'd be inclined, before agreeing to pay even the $49, to tell the telephone rep I was going to take an iPhone picture of the locksmith's vehicle and license plate, and that I needed a picture of him and his driver's license too. If the phone rep hangs up, I'm ahead of the game. (I might also call the local police station and see if maybe a patrol car might be able to mosey on over so a cop could be standing there, just in case ....)
The gaming is definitely not all Google. I was ripped-off by a scumbag locksmith out of the yellow pages.<p>Quote was: 60 + hourly. He shows up and does his best to do nothing as long as possible. He only did anything when I demanded his tools to do something - then, it was literally a second. Naturally, he demanded lots of money.
I'm almost hesitant to say this because I don't want spammers jumping all over this like they have Google, but Blekko is the shiznit. Yes, it used to suck, but try it now. Tell me if the search results aren't much higher quality.<p>Mums the word.