Who are these scary looking magazine salespeople?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve had about four encounters like this in the last two years or so.

The most recent was yesterday. It was an encounter typical of the type of which I speak.

Someone was knocking on my door very rapidly and insistently. I answered to find a kid maybe 18-22, dressed in ratty clothes, his face scraggly. “Hey how’s it going, have you seen these other kids running around, being crazy on your doorstep?” All sort of in one breath.

“No.”

“Oh, then I’m the first one?”

“Yep.”

“You’re not violent, are you, not going to make any sudden moves, try to beat me up or anything?”

“No…” (What the hell?)

“Good,” he said. “'Cause neither am I.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Let me show what I’m doing.” He pulls out from his back pocket an old, worn, badly laminated card trying to communicate that this guy is part of some contest, and for every item I buy from him he gets points.

The first time I encountered one of these guys, I bought a subscription to Discover Magazine for 25 dollars. I recieved one used issue in the mail a month later, and never got anything else.

This guy says he’s not selling magazines. But I see from the card that he is selling something. I don’t give him a chance to say what it is. “Sorry, not interested.”

“All right, that’s okay, God bless you anyway!” he says and walks off. Clearly he was telling the truth when he assured me that he would be as much a gentleman as I claimed to be, and would not be hurting me or causing me pain or anything.

Nice to know.

(On a previous encounter, the kid at this point had looked at me angrily and said, “you just gonna turn me away like that, huh?” He had subsequently left a note on my door, I guess for other members of his group, that said “Keep on walking, Danny’s already come knockin’.”)

Anyway… who are these people?

-Kris

2

They’re reps of a magazine circulation company. Many of the door-to-door sales are done by dropping off a crew of young people who were recruited, sometimes fraudulently, and encouraged to use a line of patter that makes the company sound like a charitable organization. They talk about “turning their lives around,” “winning points,” “scholarships,” etc. Some of the companies are legitimate enough, but others charge huge markups over the usual subscription price. There are also fraud rings that copy this sales technique to collect money without sending magazines, or get credit card numbers, or case houses for burglary and other felonies.

3

Yep.

A couple of weeks ago, I was just getting into the shower when I heard a knock.

I opened the door to see a 20ish white kid grinning stupidly and doing that shoulder shrugging/foot shuffling thing a lot of them do.

He was also speaking, barely legibly.

Two things I could make out were, “…your neighbor…” and, “…Brian…”

Not in a mood to shoot the breeze (it was cold, and I was only wearing a towel around my middle), I interjected, “Your name is Brian? And you’re my neighbor?”

He replied that no, he had been speaking to my neighbor Brian.

I was starting to suspect a sales routine. (I do in fact have a neighbor named Brian, so I guess this kid apparently hoped to break the ice by dropping names gleaned during the previous call).

Without a trace of friendliness, I asked, “What do you want?” He got a little flustered and replied.

“Uh, did you see two fat chicks?”

I think I was supposed to laugh or something, because when I didn’t, he paused briefly before continuing:

“They’re wearing dog collars?”

Another pause.

“They’re my competition – we compete for prizes and points --”

I interrupted him, “Oh, OK – selling? No thanks, not interested” and as I started to close the door, I could hear him start to issue the standard denial, “Oh, I’m not selling anything…”

Sounds like he was trained by the same outfit as the guy you got. And that I cut him off before he got a chance to tell me he was ‘turning (his) life around’.

4

I’ve seen several investigative news stories which raised serious concerns about the quality of life these salespeople lead. The companies profiled hired these young people, and then took them far away from their hometowns. They are driven around in vans and have little autonomy. They eat together (fast food) and sleep together in motels for weeks and weeks, depending on their supervisor for transportation to anywhere. It was pretty unflattering.

5

Man o man, I used to get the SAME people all the time, back when I lived in apartments in Gainesville, Florida (a college town). Same pitch, same sort of weird delivery from odd-looking people. Sometimes they never made eye contact, never raised their voices above a low mumble, and sometimes they’d practically try to shove their way inside to give you a big drawn-out pitch. None of their information ever looked authentic or official, either. I’d be pretty quick to dispatch them, because I have no patience for people trying to sell me stuff at home if it isn’t Girl Scout Cookies.

However, I had one college roommate who was really into aggressive advertising and marketing techniques (he was a club promoter and manager/lead singer-songwriter of a rock band), and he loved to size up different people’s sales pitches. He’s hear them out and then critique them (tell them to speak up, make eye contact, slow down, appear less frantic), and sometimes even invite them in for a soda. Once or twice he even subscribed to their dubious magazines, although I’m not sure if they ever came or not. I heard about one other guy who had a girl come to his door to try the same schpiel, he invited her in, they had sexual relations, and he ended up giving her a check for a few hundred dollars for magazine subscriptions that never arrived.