In Home Sales Demonstration… Gone HORRIBLY Wrong: A MUST READ!

Snuggie - The BAIT used to lure me into this Sales Presentation

PLEASE take the time to read this… if only to make me feel better having had to endure it!! =)  You may not learn anything…. except what NOT to do… but at least we can laugh together.  This story is too good to keep to myself, and every word is true.  Here goes….

So, last night, as I was putting dinner on the table, I heard a very cheerful knock on the door.  A friendly looking woman – holding a “SNUGGIE” that she wants to give me for free – is waiting for me when I answer it.  She asks if she can give us the Snuggie as a free gift.  My husband, the eternal pessimist, says, “So, this Snuggie is for FREE?” She says, YES.  But in return, can we give her our opinion about an Allergy Store she is opening in our area?  It will only take a few minutes.  I invite her to come back after dinner… in about 30 minutes.

When she arrives, Snuggie still in hand, my husband is deliberately out of the main living area of the house… enthralled with his latest trade proposal for his Fantasy Football team.  She asks if now is a good time and I invite her in.  She quickly excuses herself to bring in the product she wants my opinion on.  She re-appears with a male partner and I quickly send my son to tell his Dad that there is a strange man in the house… that he doesn’t have to come out, but just for him to be aware.

She proceeds to show me this hideous looking air purifier.  It is huge… looks like a window unit air conditioner… and she shows me the filters, the UV light, whatever.  She asks if she can plug it in a smaller room so I can see the difference it makes.  I oblige.  THEN, she explains that the young man she is with is in training and invites me to listen to his sales presentation on the unit.  I agree.  Immediately, two things happen.

FIRST, she gets a “call” -without ever having the phone ring once – and quickly excuses herself to help “another rookie” at someone else’s house…. leaving this strange man in my living room with NO WAY to leave as they were in the same car.  Nothing like being a captive audience in your own home.  NOW, if I was a single woman or my husband were not home at the time, this would have left me in a VERY bad situation… having invited a woman into my home – only to have her invite in a male partner and LEAVE him there with me alone… First bait and switch. Not good.

NEXT, he proceeds to do a sales presentation on the actual product… NOT the hideous, old fashioned air purifier they originally showed me, but a sleek bullet-looking Tri-Star vacuum cleaner… Oops, I’m sorry… It is not a vacuum cleaner, it is a comprehensive cleaning and purifying system.  Right.  Vacuum cleaner.  Let’s call it like it is.  Second bait and switch.

In his defense, he was good.  He was engaging, funny, and was pretty convincing… STILL, he:

• Made dramatic and disgusting noises every time he looked at what his vacuum picked up off of my floor… ALWAYS referring to it as “filth”.
• Used the exact same “vacuum” demonstrations used by a Kirby dealer we bought from 10 years ago without so much as a “tweak” in order or anything else.
• Continued to encourage me to either repeat after him or answer corny questions, regardless of my obvious intention not to be child-ized in that way.

TWO and a HALF HOURS later, my husband has re-joined us and the presentation – focused dramatically and intensely on the FILTH in my home –  continues.  The kids like it…. they’re entertained and were getting out of doing their homework.  It was entertaining for me as well, from a sales / marketing perspective… but my husband was getting furious.  It was now past our kids’ bed time and we were still doing homework… no teeth had been brushed… no baths had been taken.  AND, no word from this guy’s ride / partner in crime.  When he sees we’re becoming a bit agitated, he calls his “partner” as she is “probably lost”.

She arrives within minutes…. and begins to give the “final” presentation… She starts off:  Based on his demonstration, what would we PAY for a cleaning system like that?  $8000?  $10,000?  Um, no lady… those numbers never crossed our minds.. It is a vacuum cleaner after all – albeit a decent one.  Well, good news. THIS vacuum cleaner could be purchased tonight ONLY for $3194… PLUS, they’ll give us $700 for the Kirby we bought years ago.  THEN, without skipping a beat she informed us that people fit  into two categories… either they were BUYERS or LIARS…

If you said you had to think about this $2500 purchase, you were lying. I mean, what is there to think about?  You either “wanted to live in THIS FILTH” – dramatically looking around my home –  or you didn’t….  If you said you wanted to “sleep on it” and not make a rash decision, you were lying.. because you know that NO GOOD decisions are ever made while sleeping… (I happen to disagree, but there was no time for dialogue with this woman.) And if you said you were going to take her card and call her later, you were also lying.  (I forget why.)

So, her only question was, “Do we want to continue to live in the FILTH we had grown accustomed to – all at the fault of our previous vacuum?” We said we enjoyed the presentation and would have to decline the offer.  She looked dramatically shocked… looked at our kids and shook her head, as if she hated to see children living in such squalor.

Please understand, my husband takes great pride in our home.  As do I, but he most especially… all this talk about filth was a direct insult to him.  STEAM is coming from his ears, and I secretly looked forward to his reaction when they pushed him too far… he is normally soooooo calm, rational and controlled.  =)

We again politely decline and my husband says, “There is no way I would pay $2500 for a vacuum cleaner – even a good one.” So, she asked to borrow my phone to call her boss. I tell her to use her own phone.  She says she MUST use mine in order to prove to her boss that she was here.  I give in and she calls him from my phone…. This is what I hear on the our end of this conversation.

“HUGE, HUGE amounts… Most we’ve ever seen”  (referring to the piles of “filth” the vacuum cleaner picked up, I presume)

“YES, of course.  We assured them that it’s not THEIR fault.  They know it is the fault of their vacuum cleaner.”

“REALLY?  Are you sure?”

BREAK from phone conversation:  Michelle, can I have a scrap sheet of paper? I can’t believe what he is willing to do.

“Oh, WOW!  Okay, I’ll tell them”.

With her “supervisor” on hold, she gives us another deal to consider:  paying in payments.  We’re not interested, we assure her.  If we wanted it, we would pay outright… we don’t even make payments on CARS we drive, let alone paying crazy interest for a vacuum cleaner.

She begins to challenge my husband – my phone in her hand so her supervisor hears her –  about not wanting the vacuum cleaner.  He stands his ground.  Soon enough I start to realize, I was going to have to be rude, offensive, or perhaps even PHYSICAL to get these intruders out of my home.   By this time, I was ready for whatever the situation required.

We persist… and they FINALLY leave – even taking the white cloths filled with FILTH from my home with them… =) And leaving my Snuggie behind – which I am wearing right now as I type to YOU!

Here’s the truth… we may in fact buy a Tri-Star system… The product was great.  BUT, not from these guys. They were liars, and were such sleazy sales people.  I would never reward them with a sale.  PLUS, online you can get these systems MUCH cheaper without all of the sleaze… =)