Locks and Security News: your weekly locks and security industry newsletter
17th April 2024 Issue no. 701

Your industry news - first

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Being disingenuous to the consumer

Periodically in one context or another the subject of lock bumping comes up. This time we have a chain of events which includes the usual misrepresentation of the situation as to how it should be now by the Police in a TV programme.

A little bit of history, the patent for a 'bump key' was first registered in 1928. Then in the 1970's concerns were raised as to the security issues posed by 'bump keys'.

Or in a nut shell, for more than 40 years the knowledge that gaining entry to a so called secure product was more straight forward than the industry pretended. It therefore begs the question, not just on how these inadequate products are still being talked about, but how during this period they were even offered for sale by manufacturers, or in turn by the supply chain to their customers and for that matter by the installation companies to the consumer.

For more than a generation, and in most cases for longer than most companies in this industry have existed, the industry has misrepresented the lock security situation with the consumer.

It's not up to the standards agencies to ensure that the consumer receives what they believe they are being sold. It is up to the individual companies that deal with the end user to ensure what they are supplying measures up to what they are leading the consumer to think they are getting, the question to be asked - it does what it says on the tin.

It's in circumstances like these when a whole industry is being disingenuous to the consumer, you have to ask what else is cloaked in misrepresentation and innuendo. It should never be forgotten the only people ever paying any of our wages is the end user, if they wake up, where will we all be?

Ian McDougall

7th March 2012