When you send tag teams of young males around to neighborhoods with no ID other than a logo’d polo shirt they could have gotten anywhere, and they commence asking detailed questions about what kind of TVs and computers residents have in the house, all while officiously writing this information down on a clipboard, do not be surprised if people begin to think that this is some attempt to case the neighborhood for burglary targets. Even if this is not the case, it’s an utterly obnoxious and silly way to lead into a product pitch.
If someone becomes impatient with this odd game of Twenty Questions and begins stating, in increasingly loud and agitated tones, “I’m not interested” followed by “I want you to leave. Leave my property now”, that is not an invitation to further conversation; it is a demand that you leave. Now. No, I don’t have to give you a fucking reason, but here’s one: I just got home after 48 hours without sleep and after enduring a five-hour car ride with a gout-inflamed foot, and you woke me up for this shit.
When you send these yo-yos around to harass people in their homes for services they neither want nor need, again don’t be surprised if the persons so harassed not only vow to never purchase goods or services from AT & T again, but that they will advertise why this is so every chance they get. And call the cops on your sales people for good measure.
That is all.
So there, my own ‘get off my lawn’ moment. Man, I feel old.
I just had one of those guys a few weeks ago. I happened to be outside doing some yardwork when he came up to me and said something about his notes saying that I had Time Warner, which I replied with “Yes I do and I’m not going to switch to AT&T”
“Can I ask why”
“No, you can’t, I’m not interested, not even a little bit”
“Why not?”
“I’m not at all interested”
“Is there some reason you can give me?”
“I’m not interested, you can leave now”
It went around a few more times, I think all said and done, the entire conversation lasted about 45 seconds and beyond the initial contact I stopped even making eye contact with him and went back to my yardwork. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a nice guy and it’s not his fault, but after I made it clear I wasn’t interested (I was pretty stern about it) a “Thanks, have a nice night” was in order, he shouldn’t have kept drilling me for a reason. I think at one point I even said “Make something up, I don’t care”.
They worried the hell out of my sister to set up an appointment for their tech guys to install new equipment. It had to be done or she would loose her internet! The tech guy finally shows up & tells her that she’s not in range for the new shit to work.
Most telemarketers and cold-callers use this ploy; it’s clearly taught on the first day of How To Be An Obnoxious Dickhead Salesperson, and I’m sure that the idea is that in some tiny percentage of cases someone says, “Hey, wait! I don’t have a reason after all! Sign me up!” Of all the stupid sales cliches, along with “I’ve got to go see my manager” and “you need the Monster Cables with that”, it instantly causes the red mist to form.
I had the exact same thing happen with a company called “Vivint”. He kept asking me whether I had a security system, who was home during the day, etc. At one point, after I told him I wasn’t interested in some fancy internet-connected smoke detector, he told me that I didn’t care about my family.
We get those shitknuckles in our complex from time to time, or people hawking Clear (with whom I had a brief and particularly horrible experience and whom I will never use again even if it’s a choice between them and the global soup-cans-on-strings network). I’ve had to extend my “never answer if you don’t know who it is” phone policy to my front door. Works pretty well, too. I figure if it’s a neighbor trying to tell me the building’s on fire, l’ll eventually smell the smoke. If not, dying in a fire can’t be THAT much worse than being pestered by Clipboard-wielding Asshole.
I have to have internet service, and I like having TV service (although I suppose I could live without it), but every single local provider is such scum that it offends me morally to give them my business.
I’m very angry with my current provider Xfinity (side rant: stupid name!) and want to change providers. One of my choices for satellite is apparently just evil. The other is, well, a lesser evil. The big complaints I’ve heard are unpredictable rate increases, bogus charges, and horrible customer service.
U-Verse is quickly getting a bad reputation.
What the fuck is wrong with these companies? They know customer relations is important; they all spend millions of dollars on commercials to tell us how great their service is. Instead of attempting to brainwash us with their lies, they could spend that money on actual customer support. Customers would figure it out.
Fuck you Xfinity. Fuck you Direct TV. Fuck you Dish Network. Fuck you AT&T. You are stupid lying money-grubbing whores who can’t give a decent blow job.
We already fucking HAVE Uverse and the home owners that moved out right before we moved in HAD UVERSE TOO so this home has had Uverse installed and active for YEARS now and those little high school punks knocked on our door recently too.
I have a policy of never answering the door unless I am expecting someone (or can see from the window that it’s someone I want to talk to) because I hate solicitors.
My boyfriend will almost always answer though and he answered when the ATT kids showed up. They were trying to sell us a service this address has had for a couple years now (don’t they have a list??) and when my boyfriend was like “Uh yeah we already have it” and pointed at the box they wouldn’t go away still. They kept talking - not even sure about what. And one of them asked for a drink? (which is just kind of odd I think, we gave him one, but you would think they would be told by whatever boss person they have not to ask the people they are soliciting for food and drink, bring your own on your route?) It was just an odd experience really.
I will say besides the fact that my internet is not as fast as what I supposedly pay for, I do like the Uverse cable TV/DVR system way better than the other major option in town. And the time or two I’ve had to call ATT Uverse the people have been really nice, the online chat help people are hit and miss though on usefulness.
Heh. We got tag-teams of very attractive young women in our neighborhood. Very pleasant to talk to as well. Once I mentioned that we we worked for the same company, the discussion quickly turned to whether I knew of any better job openings in the area.
We had a very douchey-looking guy selling U-Verse in my neighborhood. I was willing to listen to what they had to offer, since we are without cable TV because XFinity is so damn expensive, but “I’ll think about it” wasn’t good enough for this guy. He proceeded to give me the hard sell, including the old “I’ll schedule you for installation, you can cancel at any time for any reason” and called the office to schedule the service. This irked me so I went into shutdown mode and basically said no to everything. The salesman seemed very irritated and never came back to our house even though I said I would consider their service.
I’m pretty sure AT & T is contracting this operation out to third parties. I’m also pretty sure I’ve read that these companies have a bad reputation for exploiting their workers: lure students in with summer job offers promising high pay and fun, fun, fun; transport them to cities far from home; put them up ten to a room in fleabags; turn them out on the street without a meal or drinks allowance, with orders to not came back until they’ve met whatever their days’ quota is; dock their pay for all sorts of real and imagined offences. I’ll see if I can find a cite; there may even have been a thread about this last year or so.
Anyway, I imagine these guys were ordered to spend at least five minutes at each door, or either get docked or work extra hours.
Followup: [This site](http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/slaves%20to%20the%20sale.html#article 5) is a digest of a 1992 Houston Chronicle series on the exploitation of young sales workers. While specific to clearinghouses that push magazine subscriptions, I believe it provides usuful insight into the attitudes and practices of the door-to-door sales industry in general.
