[lunias]

I was a victim of this when I moved into my house. Being unfamiliar with the area, I googled for a locksmith near me. It returned a result in a shopping center just about a mile away from me. I'd driven past that center before, it seemed entirely plausible that there was a locksmith in there.

I called the locksmith and they came, but in an unmarked van, spent over an hour to change 2 locks, damaged both locks, and then tried to charge me like $600 because the locks were high security. It's actually a deal for me, y'know, these locks go for much more usually. I just paid them and immediately contacted my credit card company to dispute the charge.

I called their office to complain and the lady answering the phone hung up on me multiple times. I drove to where the office was supposed to be, and there was no such office. I reported this to google maps and it did get removed very quickly, but this seems like something that should be checked or at least tied back to an actual person in some way for accountability.

Then I went to the hardware store and re-changed all the locks myself.

[socalgal2]

Just curious, if you were Google, how would you fix this? And take the question seriously, because it's harder than it sounds.

They are certainly trying. It's not good for them to have fake listings.

https://podcast.rainmakerreputation.com/2412354/episodes/169...

(just googled that, didn't listen, was looking for a much older podcast from I think Reply All from like 10yrs ago)

[lunias]

It definitely sounds like a hard problem. I'm not familiar with the current process, but based on what I found when I looked it up, it seems like there is a verification step already in place, but some of the methods of verification are tenuous. The method that seems the most secure to me is delivering a pin to the physical location that's being registered, but I feel like everything is exploitable.

[Eisenstein]

Why does Google get to say 'its hard' and we have to give them a pass? If a business is providing a service, they need to ensure it is doing what it claims. Whether it is difficult or not is not our problem.

[socalgal2]

Google isn't the one doing anything wrong. The people posting false listing are the ones doing something wrong.

[Eisenstein]

Google represents this data as legitimate.

[noAnswer]

They could send real mail to the address with an activate code in it.

[fragmede]

Locksmiths and plumbers is especially one of those things that they've figured out how to game the system to get an extra expensive service that they contract with instead of a local company that is less expensive and doesn't have the middleman.