Late last year my wife and I purchased a new home on the north side of town. I love the area; love the house and best of all we are just outside of the city so the taxes are super low. Over the past 8 months however, I’ve been subjected to a continual nuisance. Every week I have someone ringing my door bell to give me a demo, a pamphlet or something else regarding a product. Door to Door salesmen! They seem to come at inconvenient times such as in the middle of dinner, then there was one who showed up at 8:30 p.m. Regardless of the time they come knocking, they are consuming my time and I’m getting tired of it.
Most of the time when the salespeople ring my door bell I politely say no thank you and simply close the door before they can offer me their super deal of the week. There are occasions when I’m bored and feeling argumentative that I will stand there and discuss things. A great example was the “TruGreen” salesman who told me all about their services, but inadvertently told me everything I needed to do and buy to make my lawn beautiful. His words have served me well, and it only cost me 20 minutes of my time, now I have a great lawn all thanks to some of my well laid questions.
Last night was an example of one of those situations where I did not close the door. I knew right away it was going to be a sales pitch but the guy came up to my door and offered to clean the carpets in two rooms of my house for nothing, just 30 minutes of my time. When he said free carpet clean all I could see was the flash backs of my 18 month old son dumping anything from candy to grape juice on the carpet in the living room. Sure, right back here I said. “Clean away!”
Overall he had an interesting sales pitch; it was for the Kirby Vacuum cleaners. Having not heard about this product before but seeing it was an all in one style product I allowed him to continue talking and I picked up my laptop and started searching the Internet for unbiased information. As I clicked through the consumer reports, read a few articles on their ballooning interest rates they offered and saw some other scary comments I had pretty much made my decision. Well, to be honest I made my decision when I opened the first page of his sales book and the price tag stood out at me saying “$1,980.00.” I don’t recall ever paying more than $50.00 for a vacuum, let alone forking out $2,000. I continued listening to his pitch as he cleaned the stains from my carpet but then he destroyed everything he had worked up to. He made a comment about how they are all in a contest to sell the most vacuums; whoever wins receives a three day trip to Cancun, Mexico. I thought to myself this guy has some nerve he does not care about fulfilling my needs of a vacuum he just cares about the contest and winning the trip.
He finally got around to asking whether or not we were interested in the product. I told him that I do not make decisions based on 30 minute presentations and that I would have to budget for the item after doing some additional comparing and contrasting of products. Once I said that he became somewhat defensive telling me how his product was better than anything else and that there is no need to budget the item because I could finance it. My reply was “I do not finance, I despise financing and interest.” He was quick with his reply that I could avoid interest by financing through them for at 0% interest for 12 months it would effectively be the same as cash. My wife’s jaw dropped and looked at me because she had heard the line before and knew what was coming. After that, I went on a tirade about Dave Ramsey and how 0% for X months is NOT the same as cash! It took a while of bantering back and forth before he concluded I was not going to purchase the product. What I find interesting is in the last few minutes he called his boss and suddenly the number went down from almost $2000.00 to $1080.00 in a matter of 20 minutes.
I’ve concluded through my experiences with door to door salesmen that I need a sign on my door that says no soliciting. Unfortunately I know those are often ignored, perhaps I should put a sign that say’s sick baby do not ring bell. I was going to say that I’ve realized salesmen don’t have a strong understanding of personal finance items such as budgets, financing, interest. I realize however, that perhaps they do have a comprehension about those items yet they just have those lines pre formatted in order to prey on people’s weaknesses and the majority’s lack of understanding on the subject.
What are your experiences with these door to door sales people? Have you ever purchased something from them? Obviously people do otherwise this means of marketing and sales would have died long ago.
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When I started reading about the offer of free carpet cleaning, I was reminded of the carpet-cleaner cult people on Seinfeld…
The best door-to-door pitch I have ever received wan’t from a salesperson (well, sort of, I guess), but from two evangelists from LDS.
I had been working on hanging drywall and mudding at my house all evening when the doorbell rang. I was tired, sweaty, covered in dust and in no mood to talk, but my mother raised me to always answer the door, so I headed down the stairs and opened my door to see two clean-shaven young men in crisp white shirts and black pants, each wearing a name tag identifying himself as Edler So-and-So. I rolled my eyes slightly and wiped the plastery sweat from my brow as I politely told them that I was a little busy and didn’t have time to chat.
“Would you like some help?” asked the taller one.
I gritted my teeth, held back a few choice words, and pulled the door open. “Get in!” I said.
To my surprise, the boys from Utah didn’t balk. They dutifully followed me upstairs and started light conversation as they assessed the situation, rolled up their sleeves, and proceeded to join me in hanging drywall. They were good workers, too! They acutally worked harder than I did that night, getting their nice clean clothes full of drywall dust and mud. During the whole time we were working they were spreading their message to me, and we actually had a reasonble, civil discussion and debate.
I actually admired these guys for practicing what they preached- they said they were willing to help, and they did without hesitation. They left me with some literature and their phone number- I was tempted to begin using them as my own private work crew (”Hey, Elder Doe- my life is lacking meaning… and I need some boxes moved, and the lawn mowed, and the gutters cleaned.”), but my conscience prevented me from following through. Maybe they did have an impact on me after all!