We had a truck relying on an old GPS unit drive down our road a decade or so ago. He actually tried driving down a gas company right-of-way that branches off our road. The truck was stuck in swampy ground and there was no way the driver could get out.
I called the 1-800 “how’s my driving?” number and told the woman who answered that their driver sucked. The owner of the company got on the line with me and apologized. They sent a more experienced driver, and he was able to get the truck out.
I assume a “stuck car” would have to call for a tow.
As they told you at your closing, I will be stopping by to offer you my anti-unsolicited solicitor services. You should expect me either right before you wake up, as you are sitting down for dinner, or as you are settling down for the night.
I’m usually in a hurry to get rid of them (ADT, pest control, lawn care, blacktop) but they always seem to be armed with a comeback for every excuse in the book. I’ve found “I’m not the homeowner” to shut them down quickly and if they ask “when will they return?” simply reply “I don’t know”.
That’s because you’re wasting too much time. If I’m in my kitchen and they make eye contact with me through the window, I’ll yell ‘nope’ through the window and wave them away. If I know they’re in the area, I just don’t answer the door.
However, if they catch me off guard, ring the bell and I open the door, as soon as I see the clipboard in their hands, they have about a half a sentence to convince me they’re not a salesperson. As soon as they say they’re with ADT/AT&T/Spectrum etc, I just say ‘not interested’ and close the door.
People have told me it’s rude, but I’ll argue that they’re being ruder. They’re on my property, interrupting me. You can’t convince me it’s rude to tell to take a hike.
Apparently scammers pretending to be from ADT or affiliated companies have cropped up in a number of areas.
ADT even has warnings on its website about crooks posing as ADT employees.
I am not a fan of ADT or any company that installs home security systems. The typical business model is founded on offering free or heavily discounted basic equipment, then dinging you for add-ons and especially for high-priced multiyear monitoring contracts.
I do it at work too. One of the times I did it, someone (that works here) commented on how ‘mean’ I was to them. However, she didn’t know that those same two sales people from Quill had stopped a few weeks back, I sat and talked with them for a while, told them I wasn’t interested and they’d stopped in multiple times since then, each time being told I wasn’t interested and to stop coming in. The last time I either raised my voice or threatened to call the police or something, but they stopped showing up. Which is good, because I was getting really sick of them.
Even better was Time Warner Cable. For about a year I was getting cold calls from them a few times a month wanting to come out for a ‘site survey’ and quote me on phone/internet service. Every single time they called I explained that we already had TWC so they can stop calling me about it. I told one of them if they don’t take me off whatever lead list I’m on, I’m going to take them up on their offer and let them come down and waste their time doing a site survey and preparing a quote. So, the next time they called, I told them to come on down and I’d love to talk to them.
Now, that was a bit of a dick move, and the guy happened to be driving around with his supervisor that day, but at some point earlier in the day before he got here, he put it together. So he was annoyed, which was the goal, but it didn’t catch him totally off guard. And they never cold called me again. Though maybe my place was moved from the lead list to one of his accounts.
On the subject of cold calls - a few years ago we had endless calls from auto accident lawyer groups, always saying that they wanted to talk about that accident you had, “The one in the last three years. The one that wasn’t your fault…”
I was working from home at the time, spending my day in front of a computer, and it occurred to me that when these calls came in I could (a) have some fun with them; and (b) record it. You had to be quick (phone to hands free, headset close to the speaker, open the recorder and record) but I have some fragments. For posterity I now present a transcribed 28 second fragment from one of these calls.
Me: The issue I have is that you say “Not my fault” – but it was my fault. That’s why I went to prison.
Caller: Uh, when did that accident happen?
Me: Oh…I don’t like to talk about it. You know, there’s…there’s still a lot of recrimination about the deaths involved.
Caller: OK, sorry about that, we’ll take your number off our lists. Have a nice day. Bye. [Hangs up]
See, they were nice, really - they wished me a nice day.
If they persisted they got the details of the accident - I was drunk, I stole a truck, I ran into a group of nuns. On one glorious occasion the caller - who happened to be an American woman - stopped me and said “I’m sorry, I need to speak to my supervisor” and hung up - and then her supervisor rang me back!
Of course the big money is in the monitoring contract. They charge something like $25 per month for it, and the marginal cost is next to nothing. And plenty of people keep paying for it, year after year.
That’s a lot. And think about what they’re providing for that. They’re monitoring millions of alarm systems at the same time. So if your alarm goes off, an alert pops up on a computer screen in their monitoring center and then some flunky calls you, or the local police or whatever.
