Scamming the scammer

Before it gets too late to tell this story, I figured I ought to post it.

For the past several weeks, I’d been helping my friend Mike with a tiling job. Due to her work schedule and our work on tiling, Ashley and I hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time together. So one of the nights last week when I went to work, she went with me.

As we pulled up to the house and got out of her car, I did something dumb: I left the car keys in the car and locked them in. Whoops. To make matters worse, the keys to my truck were also in Ashley’s car. No spare keys were available.

I knew my brother-in-law Jeff had a door-opening-kit of some sort, and hoped he could come rescue us. Unfortunately, he was unable to come. So instead, my sister drove out and gave us the kit. Mike and I messed around with it for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, and then decided to call a locksmith. I used my phone to google “las vegas locksmith” and the first result (in Google Adwords) was the following outfit.

When I called, I asked how much it would be to get keys out of a car. They told me it was $50 and up, depending on the situation. Perhaps I should’ve inquired more, but I assumed “$50 and up” couldn’t go any higher than 80 or 100 bucks.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, this unprofessional, yet smarmy looking fellow in a car (no business decals on the side to indicate his company, either) showed up. He popped the door open in about 30 seconds. Then we walked back to his car so I could pay him, and he told me it was going to be $160.

I told him I wouldn’t pay that amount. I’d pay $50, $75… even as much as $100. But $160 was downright extortion.

He argued with me for a few minutes, and then Janet (the lady we’d been doing the tile job for) came over and started calling him a scammer. I reiterated that I wouldn’t pay him $160.

He finally said, “Fine, I’ll just put the keys back in the car and lock the door, and you can find someone else to come open the door for you.” I figured waiting another half hour for another locksmith would be worth $100 or so in savings.

However, by now, Ashley had posession of the keys. He yelled at Ashley to put the keys back in the car so he could lock it. After some minor confusion as to what was going on (Ashley hadn’t been really involved or paying close attention to what we had been arguing about), Ashley stepped out of the car and threw the keys back in. The guy got in his car and sped off.

As I was thinking to myself, “Well, time for Plan B,” Ashley revealed something amazing. Her key ring has detachable rings on it, and she had detached the car key and hidden it in her pocket when she threw the rest of the keys back into the car.

It’s a good thing I married such a crafty, tricky lady. She saved us from having to call anyone else AND 160 bucks. She succeeded in scamming the scammer.