I was visited not once, but three frickin’ times by the same door to door salesman today. The tenacity (or should I say stupidity?) of some people is awe-inspiring.
First time, this guy rings the bell…I do not answer, so he rings the bell again. I still do not answer, so he knocks. Still do not answer, so he leaves. But are we finished? Noooo…
He comes back two hours later. This time is a repeat of the first.
Third time is about an hour after that. By now, I am having decidedly homicidal thoughts. So I answer the door and ask just what the hell is so Og-awful important that he has to repeatedly annoy me: Do I want to buy some seafood? No? How about some $3 steaks? Grrrrr… :mad:
I tell this story to BF when he comes home. His first suggestion was that I should have taken advantage of Colorado’s “make my day” law and shot him on the porch. While I found the suggestion appealing, I also though it was maybe a tad extreme.
His second suggestion however, I love:
We put up one of those “no soliciting” signs
We festoon the front porch with police tape
We draw a chalk outline on the porch, and strew some 9mm casings about.
-He tried to speak to you so he called in;
-He didn’t find you home twice, so he tried a third time
-The door swings open and out of the blue and he gets confronted by an angry **picunurse. **
If you choose to not answer the door (which is totally fine), then there is no way for a person to know that he is in fact bothering you every time he knocks. As far as he knows, you weren’t home when he knocked the first two times.
Okay…my mom had a d-to-d salesman actually put his foot in the doorway and push his way in. She was freaked out by this, as I would be. I’ve never forgotten that story. I simply don’t deal with them. I’m lucky in that I have a window right next to the door and can see who’s out there. I open the window a little, ask them what they want, and tell them I’m not interested. But no fucking way do I open the door. There are way too many headlines with this scenario and a bad ending.
If I were going to open the door, I’d ask to see their peddler’s license first.
I thought this sales strategy went out with the advent of…I dunno…the Pony Express or something. How can they possibly make any money?
I have a big, black Lab who sounds absolutely ferocious when the door bell rings. I make a big deal of trying to “restrain” the dog by holding onto his collar. This gets rid of D-to-D salesmen very quickly.
Many towns have laws against door to door sales. Usually they have to apply for a license and get a picture ID from the town. It’s that way in the town I work in. If it is the same in your town call the cops if he does not have the proper credentials. If everyone did this it would cut down on the amount of scam artists and professional burglars who are trying to find out who is home. If the salesman is legit he should have no problem obeying local laws.
I usually meet strangers outside with the doberman and standard poodle running loose. I call the dogs to me and ask what they want - they usually want to leave.
Several months ago we had a couple of kids shilling door to door for “gutter guard”. Mr. SCL was interested, so he gave the kids our phone number to set up an appointment. When the office guy called and they were trying to reach an acceptable date for an appiontment, the appointment guy insisted that I be present. I have no interest in gutter guard - if Mr. SCL wants to do it, it’s his business. I had no intention of sitting through some crappy sales presentation. Appointment Guy kept insisting that I be present. Mr. SCL finally said “well, if that is how it is, cancel our appointment. I don’t want to deal with you.”
Since then, we have had 5 more sets of kid come to the door for “Gutter Guard”. Usually I am the one to answer the door, and I just say "no thanks’. The last two came while Mr. SCL was home, and when the first one came to the door he lost it and cussed the guy out.
How many times do you have to say “no” before these people will quit? I almost wish we had mean dogs.
I just have a sign on my door that says “No salespeople.” It keeps them away. And I know they’re in the neighborhood, because I see them walking up and down the street. Once in a while someone will ring the bell, and when I get to the door they’re already backing away, saying “Sorry, I didn’t notice your sign,” and that’s all there is to it.
A sign would be fine, but I agree with Maastricht: the guy didn’t interupt you three times. If you’d have answered the door the first time and bluntly said, “No, go away”, that surely would have been it. He came back because you pretended not to be home.
One of my favorite Chas. Addams cartoons shows a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman staring nervously at the infamous house, where we can see, dangling from a limb of a tree on the long drive, a dead salesman, a noose around his neck, still clutching his vacuum cleaner.
Stand behind the closed door, jack a pump shotgun and say in a very nervous voice, “Who are you, how did you find me? Are you REALLY sure you want me to open this door?!” That oughta do it… :eek: I love pump shotguns, the deterrent effect of that noise is simply marvelous.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but in the movie “Secondhand Lions”, there’s a scene where Robert Duvall and Micheal Caine are sitting on the front porch of their house out in the country. A salesman drives up. Almost immediatly, they both pull out rifles and shotguns and begin firing at the salesmen(but never actually hit the salesman, being content to scare them off).
In a deleted scene, it’s revealed that Robert Duvall’s character was secretly inviting the salesmen to come over, just so they’d have something to do during the day.
