How To Avoid Door To Door Salesmen
When I was a kid and thought of the word of salesmen in my mind I would get a cartoonish image of some greasy car salesmen. You know the type, ready to sell a slick looking new car with garbage under the hood to an unsuspecting victim. As we get older though we often want to convince ourselves that that unsavory image is just silly and nothing more than a stereotype. In some ways this can be silly but trust me when I say there are still many out there that would sell their own mothers just to make that sale.
It is because of these type of people that I am sometimes driven to near agoraphobic behaviour. Basically becoming a hermit while in my home. I have often not answered my door for fear of a salesmen or possibly others I would rather not see. I never answer my home phone unless I recognize the telephone number that's calling me. I also find myself bombarding by more junk mail on a daily basis than I ever receive in normal mail, and that includes bills. Don't get me started on my email.
So not to long ago when I answered my door (when I was waiting on a package) I was surprised to see a stranger staring back at me and not the postman. He claimed to have been referred to me by my gas company and wanted to switch me over to a better contract. As I understood it was still through my gas company. So I listened. Throughout our three hour conversation about everything from my health, to my business to how much we had in common he explained the contract. As he said it was supposed to be a new initiative that was being introduced by the government to subsidize certain peoples gas bills and, lucky me, I was selected. After awhile he had me believing him as he had so much of my info already and had a way of getting even more including finally a signature from me.
After he left I read through the pamphlets he gave me and realized I had made a mistake. I called into his company, which was not associated with my gas company and asked some hard questions. Turned out it wasn't subsidized through the government. The check I was to receive was a one time thing for signing up. Not every month. The contract he was putting me on was something like equal billing where they get a lot of people on contracts and then charge everyone slightly above the average to make money from them as a whole. Just one problem though, I live in a small house and as such would normally pay a lot less through my own gas company. I promptly cancelled the contract over the phone and called my gas company and let them know not to do deal with the company on my behalf if they were to be contacted.
Suffice to say I will thing twice before opening my door again unless I know who is on the other side.
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