Nebulous Mooch

I hate door to door sales people. That’s not really true. I don’t really hate the people, I just hate the door to door sales that they’re doing. Many of them are probably perfectly nice to be around when they’re not trying to sell you something. I’m sure they must hate their jobs too. I mean I would hate it if I had to do that.

Anyway, there was a knock on the door this morning and since I was doing my hair I told my husband to answer it. It was a door to door salesman. Their spiels are so good sometimes that I wish I could record them. This one was about changing our telephone and broadband provider.

Salesman: Hello. Are you Mr. Martinez?

My husband: No you must have the wrong address.

Salesman: That must be the previous tenant’s name.

My husband: I don’t know.

Salesman: It doesn’t matter. We’re interviewing people who use OP company about their telephone and internet service.

My husband: I’m not with OP company.

Salesman: …and people with XYZ company too. I’m from ABC company and we’ve been getting a lot of complaints from people in your area about XYZ company’s rising prices.

(I would like to point out how this makes no sense. Why would customers from XYZ be calling ABC to complain about XYZ’s prices?)

My husband: I’m happy with XYZ company.

Salesman: I wouldn’t want you to change a service you’re happy with. You can have the exact same service with us for cheaper.

(Wouldn’t that be changing your service?)

My husband: I’ll compare the rates online and see what I think.

Salesman: This is a special offer. You won’t find anything online this  low.

My husband: I’m not interested then.

Salesman: We’ve come all the way from Manchester to help you save money.

(Wow! He’s really committed to helping us save money. After all he came all the way from Manchester.)

My husband: Sorry I’m not interested.

My husband just told me that he thinks he should put up a “No Solicitors” sign on our door. Since they call lawyers solicitors here I don’t think that would do us much good. I’m not too keen on lawyers either–unless they’re my sister, but we don’t tend to have a problem them knocking on our door and trying to get us to sue somebody.

Photo by L*u*z*a*

The other day I was cooking dinner when there was a knock on the door. No one else in the house seemed to have heard it, so I answered it. As soon as I opened the door the young woman on my doorstep said, “There you are! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all day. Where have you been?”

I stood there confused for a few seconds trying to place her face in my mind. Then I finally said, “Look, I don’t know who you think I am, but I don’t know you.”

“You’re American,” she said. All the solicitors feel the need to point that out to me. “Where in American are you from?”

I furrowed my brow and thought about the onions that must be burning on the stove by now and said, “I still don’t know who you are.”

Well, it turned out that I didn’t know her. She was a solicitor trying to get me to switch gas companies. I let my husband deal with it because I could tell her spiel would take a long time and I was trying to cook dinner.

A half hour later, I was putting dinner on the table and my husband was still talking to her. When he finally finished, he came into the kitchen and said, “I hope you don’t mind. I changed our gas company.”

I don’t mind at all. I changed our gas company last month and ever since I did I was afraid that it was a horrible mistake. We still haven’t received our first bill from that company. I’m glad my husband made the switch this time. Now if we start getting incredibly high gas bills it can be his fault, not mine.