[Tia Maria]

Hard selling was just being clamped down on in the UK when we left but I've just come across my first experience in NZ.

A guy comes to the door, looking slightly official, ID tag round his neck. He says he's come due reports of power surges, (now coming from London I'm immediately suspicious :D ), and that these are causing unusually high power bills and had I noticed my power bills are high?

I say, "oh I don't know", to which he offers to check out my latest power bill. I then click he's wearing a Mercury Energy top and that I use a different company.

So I say "Oh I see, you want me to switch providers, you're not from my power company at all", this seems to throw him a bit and he says "Well I was just going to see if I could save you some money". I politely decline saying I can check it all out on Consumer.org. He's pretty pushy and shows me the bills of all the other people he's seen that day.

So I have to get a bit more direct and he eventually gets the message.

But I wondered if this was a new phenomenon to NZ? He did seem to have an awful lot of bills and I suspect not all of them knew what they were agreeing to.

Anyone else come across this in NZ?

Cheers

Tia

[jubjub]

The one to really watch out for are the Kirby vacuum salesman....

they offer to come in and clean the carper of one room in your house for free... and they wont leave until you sign something, or physically chuck them out! My friend even threatened to call the police, they left pretty sharply then! Oh, and they didnt clean anything either!

[Tia Maria]

Its strange, I just wasn't expecting hard sell tactics over here.

I wonder if a load of people have just been signed up to Mercury Energy without realising it!?

Cheers

Tia

[ellenmelon]

sky used to do it. grrr. i would tell them to eff off and shut the door.

[Smiler]

The one to really watch out for are the Kirby vacuum salesman....

they offer to come in and clean the carper of one room in your house for free... and they wont leave until you sign something, or physically chuck them out! My friend even threatened to call the police, they left pretty sharply then! Oh, and they didnt clean anything either!

Oooh wasn't that one on Fair Go last year? Are they still doing it?

One of the benefits of living in the sticks - no cold callers and very little junk mail :clap (apart from Straight Furrow and Countrywide, which are actually very good reading material :o)

[jubjub]

Our beware of the dog sign on the easiest entrance to our house keeps all but the most determined away!

[Kim39]

The one to really watch out for are the Kirby vacuum salesman....

they offer to come in and clean the carper of one room in your house for free... and they wont leave until you sign something, or physically chuck them out! My friend even threatened to call the police, they left pretty sharply then! Oh, and they didnt clean anything either!


Sal, i have to disagree with you on this one i'm afraid, as we had them out the other week. We weren't told that is was Kirby until they arrived at the door. The thing that did dissappoint us was the words "cleaned", as we were expecting the suite to be shampoo'ed, when in fact they just hoovered it.

Now when they explained who they were, we pointed down the hallway to the Kirby G4 which we have had for 14 years. The smile on the guys face was a picture, and he then started to spout the benefits of the Kirby, which we agreed with, but not once did he try the hard sell, even though he knew we were looking to upgrade on the model.

Kim

[jubjub]

Sounds like you got a reasonable one Kim... so they must exist! Maybe just not in our patch of Auckland...

[Andy-Dee]

Please tell me Amway doesn't exist in NZ - I've had the 'you obviously don't understand multilevel marketing' speech so many times over the years, I'm thinking of writing a book called - Yes I do and its just rebadged pyramid selling.

[JandM]

At one time we lived on an open-plan estate, and you'd see a mini-bus arrive, and business-suited sales reps pile out and disperse in all directions - could be anything from religion, to political parties, to sales of objects, or services, or business opportunities. What a bore to deal with!

Then we moved here. We're only about a half-mile away, but in the old part of the town, in a house behind the main road frontage, that some people who've lived here there entire life don't even know exists, to the extent that even staff of the local sub-post-office, which we live behind, shrug their shoulders when asked by delivery drivers for our surname or house-name (and we've been here 28 years). Absolutely NO doorstep callers - it's fantastic!