The setting:
A small New England town on a Saturday morning.
The scene:
<doorbell rings>
LotV opens the door, expecting yet another kid hawking fundraisers for school.
Mysterious door-to-door salesman speaks in a Southern accent…
“Hi there. We’re from North Carolina. We’re selling furniture.”
LotV looks out, sees two plain white tractor-trailers parked on her quiet, generally traffic-free road.
LotV is so surprised, she is unable to think of a single thing to say to rescue this scene except…
“Errr…we’re not interested.”
LotV closes door, and locks it behind her.
<trucks proceed down the street, apparently trying the neighbors>
The End.
What the heck was that? Door-to-door furniture sales? In a small, rural town? Stolen furniture…or trying to steal our furniture? Has this happened to anyone else?
Kinda like that one time in my first apartment where a kid was so desperate for money he came to my door and asked ME if he could take out my garbage for a buck.
Same kid came back a month or so later, asking if he could ‘buy’ one of my cats because they were having mouse problems. I told him no.
MetalMaven
ok i never had a furniture salesman, but i have had a guy selling meat out of his back seat. how weird is that? i asked if he had any bacon but he said no.
Apparently there are other roving bands of furniture sellers in the Nashua area, but they are far less reputable than the one cited. He has receipts, contact information, and a track record of customer service. His display book purportedly is clearly labelled with the correct manufacturers. He explains his true business, and applies for licenses.
The others are unlicensed (I’ve seen them set up a tent across from a major furniture store and sell furniture until the cops came, in response to the store’s complaints, and asked to see their license) They also, according to citizen complaints, tell cock-and-bull stories about coming to town to deliver furniture, COD, to a customer who refused to pay, They claim they’ll sell it at a discount, so they can deadhead back. (This is fishy on so many levels: who sells furniture COD? From 700 miles away? Delivering in their own truck? And if that’s not the seller’s truck, what right would a shipper have to sell the load? And why would they bother trying - they’re truckers not furniture salemen. In this age of credit cards and electronic payments COD is pretty uncommon and people without credit cards are often a bit short on cash, so this can’t be the first time they were refused. Maybe the seller can’t qualify for a merchant account -or checking account- or wants to evade the consumer protections a credit card offers. Why would I want random furniture the original chooser didn’t want, once they’d seen it? Since they’re driving back anyway, I have to wonder how much of a discount they’d off - gas money? That’s just a fraction of a normal delivery charge.
BTW, the guy didn’t have any bacon, but he had sold a side of beef to Michael J. Fox, who costarred on Family Ties with Michael Groos, who was in the movie Tremors with … Kevin Bacon
I hate people peddling things! We have a no solicitor thing on our fence and they still bother me. I was watering the grass on Saturday and this kid is showing me chocolate throug hthe fence trying to bother me and I said no thanks…then Sunday morning I was washing my car and this woman asks me if she can wax my floor for free. Wax my floor for free? She said if I don’t like it I don’t have to pay. She was trying to case my house!
I don’t mind peddlars calling, if I’m not busy. I had a great experience with an Irish traveller the other day. He came to my door with a bag of orthopedic pillows: “Would ye like to buy a pillow, they’re fully hypoallergenic and orthopedic, like?”
I had been meaning to buy some new pillows anyway - so I asked how much. €20 for the pair. I checked my wallet. No money. “I’ll give them to ye for €16 then.” But I honestly hadn’t got any money in the house. Well, maybe in my change jar. So I went and counted it out: €8 was all I had. I went back to the door and told him that was all I had. “Hmmm,” he said. “All right then, have you any auld tea? Gi’s a package of tea and the €8 and you can have 'em.”
As luck would have it, I did have a brand new unopened packet of Barry’s Gold Blend teabags, so I fetched it, gave the gent the tea and the €8, and got my pillows. As I closed the door I heard him shouting to his wife: “look what I got! A package of tea!”
They’re great pillows, too. Fair exchange is no robbery!
We’ve had guys come by peddling fresh shrimp out of the back of their pickup.
Of course, we’re 30 miles from the Gulf and we can run down the road and buy fresh seafood at a market a couple miles from our house every day that was fresh caught that morning, so it’s not quite as unusual as it sounds.
