Horror Stories

Please tell me that I'm not the only victim of locksmiths form hell.

First let me admit that I'm to blame for starting this disaster. My only defense for doing something as stupid as locking myself out of my house is that I've just moved and hadn't yet worked out the new front door.
But what followed definitely wasn't my fault.
I rang 118118 on my mobile and asked for the numbers of three locksmiths to be text to me, saying that i wanted ones with the local phone code.
But only one of the three texts had the local code-and that number was unobtainable.
That left me with two 0800 numbers, which is what i wanted to avoid, but what was i to do? For all i knew, there was only one local locksmith, and he'd closed down.
I called one of the 0800 numbers and got UK locksmiths (www.uklocksmiths.net and www.unitedkingdomlocksmiths.com). So i asked the obvious questions: how much and how long?
The answers wer £55, which seemed reasonable, and "he'll be there very, very soon", which sounded great.
Both answers proved hopelessly wide of the mark.
That first phone call of mine was made about 9am.
At 10:45 I was told "He's ten minutes away."
At 11:20 "He's just aroun the corner."
The locksmith must have been going backwards, because at 11:45 he was "30-35mins away".
Perhaps I should have told them to get lost and tried the other 0800 number. But most people, I expect use a locksmith once in a blue moon and for all i knew this kind of delay was normal.
After three and a half hours he finally arrived.
Only then was I told the full cost of the service.

£55 was just the call-out fee. Drilling the lock and replacing it, plus VAT, would bring the total bill to £293.
Yes, £293.

I don't know why I didn't ask him politely to leave. Sticking a brick through a window and then calling a glazier would surely have been cheaper. Perhaps I was suffering from boarderline hypothermia (it really was a very cold morning).
Or mabey, like so many people who've locked themselves out of their own house, the desperation to get back inside over-rode my normal critical faculties.
The first thing I did when I got inside and the feeling returned to my frozen fingers was to flick through Yellow Pages. It was full of locksmiths whose phone numbers began with the local code.
Why didn't 118118 give me any of them?