Missed edit window.
[Quote=sudden kestrel]
Also, what the fuck is U-verse?
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ETA: U-verse is AT & T’s bundled phone/cable/internet service. It’s advertised rather heavily; sure you’ve never heard of it?
It is possible to get just the Internet service, and I believe it’s possible to get TV-only, but they definitely push the bundle. We have Internet+phone (and the Internet service is actually quite reliable compared to the increasingly spotty AT&T DSL service it replaced, whose 6Mbps speed began dipping to <1Mbps every night, for which they allegedly could not find a reason or solution) and are constantly barraged with junk mail and email begging us to add the TV service.
Yet another reason to enjoy living in the middle of nowhere. Four years now, and no one has ever come to the door that wasn’t either someone we know or delivering something we ordered.
Could you give me a reason why you don’t want anyone to come to your door flogging Internet services?
Over-using a joke that was funny the first time makes me want to go down to the quarry and throw stuff in it.
Actually, in plenty of markets in the United States, customer service means dick because there’s so little competition.
There are two cable providers here in San Diego: Cox and Time-Warner. The problem is that they’re not actually in competition with one another. In areas where Cox operates, you can’t get T-W, and vice-versa. They have a cozy little set-up whereby Cox gets the area south of the San Diego River, and T-W gets the area to the north.
Luckily, my service with Cox has, over the past four years, been excellent in terms of speed and uptime, but if it sucked i couldn’t threaten to go with T-W in order to get Cox off their asses. And, while the price isn’t too outrageous, i wonder whether it might be better if there were someone else in the game.
AT&T does operate in San Diego, and they boast on their website about their UVerse packages and about their DSL speed, but when i plug in my address, in a pretty heavily built-up part of the city, it says that the fastest DSL speed i can get is 1.5 Mbps.
1.5 megabits? In a fairly comfortable, middle-class urban neighborhood of America’s 8th-largest city? In 2012? Are they fucking kidding?
That sort of speed means that Cox, at least where i live has literally no competition at all for decent internet service. And i guess that we haven’t seen that AT&T salespeople around here because the company knows that it just can’t compete.
Nope, never have. We live in BFE; it’s probably not worth the cult-member feed to send people out here, plus there are a lot of loose dogs and rednecks with weapons.
BFE? Boyfriend Experience?
Would you care to re-phrase that?:dubious:
Bum fuck Egypt. Urban Dictionary entry.
Nah, the reason they do it is to extend the conversation, get you to commit to a statement why you don’t want it, and work to overcome the objection. If they can shoot down that argument, they then try to close on you. “But we’ve just shown you why your objection is wrong/of little consequence, surely you see why our product will make you happy.” If they can talk to you, they’ve got a shot. If you shut them down cold, they’re out of luck.
I’ve taken a very hard line on talking to people I don’t want to. Panhandlers with sob stories approaching me in parking lots, people who approach me at the gas pumps and want me to visit their church, door-to-door salesman - they’re not likely to even get a greeting in. Rude, but that’s where my life experience has led me. No one in those situations have ever said anything I wanted or needed to hear, so they no longer get my time.
Well… I spent about three months doing this crap for a living while I was out on furlough once (long story…) So let’s see what I remember…
First, we’ll replace the notion of getting docked (for doing it wrong or not enough, or whatever) with the knowledge that there is no “pay”, as it were. These jobs are universally straight commission.
Complete with fuckwit supervisors who love to tell you how stupid people with real jobs and salaries are (I’m not kidding about that), because, & I quote “There’s no limit to what you can make here.”
Exploiting workers? I would say it’s more like selling workers on the idea that they can make shedloads of cash if they’re willing to front-up a few things.
Out of town jobs? What I remember was only two or three to a room (only, right?), but basically, yeah, nothing ever better than Super 8 or Red Roof. For food & travel costs, Airfare, food, lodging, the lot of it, were expensed based on how well you did. Sell nothing? They’ll tell you that you must have been on vacation, so you eat the cost of it. They would go up in 25% increments from there (sell 25% of quota, they pay for 25% of the trip, etc…)
In defense of the gig, I will say it was possible to do very well on these trips. But that happened one of two ways. A. You are to salesmanship what Lance Armstrong is to biking (yes, I do mean both talent and a willingness to bend lots of rules), or B. You are a great looking broad. Short of that, you’ll come home with about $612 of the $4000-$5000 they promised the 4 day (which turned into a week and a half somehow) trip would be worth and like you said, they’ll find a way to pay you about half of what they owe, and then blame you for it. Class act, huh?
In any case, please, if have any conscience or even just a desire to be a decent human being at all, whatsoever, do not take what I said as a call to be sympathetic to your beleagured traveling salesman. In fact, be as rude, mean and generally rejectionarian as you think you can. No person should ever be encouraged to do this for a living!
Hope that helps some…
Thanks for the info, DarkSnowyNight.
Kirby vacuum salespeople are just as bad. I know because I own a Kirby that I didn’t want, because ex-wife.
I nearly called the police on a Kirby salesman once. I politely told him I wasn’t interested, and then less politely told him I wasn’t interested, and then I told him to leave, and then I tried to close the door and he stuck his foot in it.
I told him he had about a second to get out of my house before I called the police. He finally left.
I just tell sales people and solicitors, “I’m going to do you a big favor. Since I have ZERO interest in continuing this conversation, I’m going to let you get to your next prospect right now.” Or words to that effect.
It tends to work pretty well.
ive had great effect at getting them to leave by befuddling them with techey questions like “what Are your concurrent up/download speeds? (noone ever knows… i dont even know what my current connection actually does.)” or asking about their bandwidth caps (iirc its 500 gigs). ive had one selling it on the phone pass me top a tech, who after i explained i had 3 terabytes of data i wanted to back up online ( i do) simply agreed they couldn’t help me. Much like jehovas witnesses… they dont bother me anymore.
According to the AT&T website, caps are 250GB/month, which is in line with most other major ISPs.
This is the very company I came in here to post about. A while back one of their salesmen showed up at my door, in spite of the prominent “No Soliciting” stickers on both the mailbox and front porch.
Anyway, he starts asking me if I know whether or not the neighbors have alarm system, and if I know about the alarm cables running through the neighborhood.
I stop him after about a minute and tell him, “I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you’re trying to sell, but I don’t have time for this.”
He then digs out his ID and tries to hand me a brochure, but I close the outer door, lock it and tell him if he doesn’t get off my property, I’m going to have to get the authorities involved.
If your salesman is creeping potential clients the fuck out, that’s not a good thing, especially if you’re peddling alarm system.
This is why I don’t bother to answer the door unless I’m expecting someone.