Saturday, November 7, 2009

My Afternoon SUCKED...Literally

** by Matt Bowman**

I learned today that Valerie is no longer allowed to answer the door at our house. We'll see if I can still trust her to answer the phone!

We had just got back home from another amazing shopping trip for Valerie (that's another story) when she saw a woman walking up our driveway. I pretty much ignored it, thinking that it was probably a neighbor. No, I couldn't have been more wrong

She told Valerie that they were opening a business in the area & in order to build some relationship with people in the community they were going to come in & clean one room in our home for free. She mentioned some other stuff like shampooing & scotch-guarding the carpets. What she failed to mention & what Valerie didn't foresee was that this was just the hook or the proverbial "shoe in the door". The next thing I know, this lady is vacuuming our living room & going to get other people.

Within 15 minutes this lady was replaced by 2 guys dressed in slacks, shirts & ties & carrying boxes. Ah yes the old bait & switch; we were now the unknowing victims of a product demonstration, not a free cleaning service to promote a new business. In fact, we never laid eyes on the lady, whom we only know as "Michelle", again.

So.... 3 hours later (yes 3 hours later, you're not imagining that, I wrote 3 hours) we finally convinced the salesman we would not be buying this amazing advancement in sucking technology. He couldn't believe that we didn't want to spend $2,600 on a new vacuum. Now the vacuum was pretty cool. It could be used to unclog sinks, spray paint, blow leaves, & I think you could even rig it to travel through time, but $2,600? Even when we made it perfectly clear that we wouldn't even pay $1,000 for it, his bosses were still pressuring him to pressure us. Don't get me wrong, he was a pretty nice guy, but the whole thing was weird, especially when I could see his cohorts continually driving past our house. Valerie of course thought this was all a setup for a later burglary of our home, so I may have to skip church tomorrow to stand guard.

The moral of the story: when people come to your door promising you something that's too good to be true (free stuff, new cool weird religion) remember that it probably is too good to be true. Don't let them get their foot in the door because once they're in, it's over. So do what we used to do when I was a kid: we would run through the house, turn off the lights & hide, even if we knew that they knew we were inside!

4 comments:

  1. Val, Val, Val!!! Always assume that its a Jehovah's Witness coming to knock on your door. Running through the house turning off the lights & hiding in the back of the house is always the best tactic. On the other hand, if it was a Kirby then they are pretty cool & I could see where it would be easy to get sucked in. My friend has one & they will actually set up a payment plan for you!

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  2. yeah it was the kirby people, but they never mentioned that they were there to sell vacuums. they made themselves sound like a cleaning service business that was starting in the area. Then boom there's a $2,000 vacuum in my living room, & I'm sorry I'm not buying any vacuum cleaner that requires a down payment & financing. I believe Dave Ramsey would agree that that is dumb debt.

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  3. I usually do hide from the Jehovah's Winesses that come around every 4-6 weeks. However, back in April or May they caught me while we were outside. I held my ground though, and took those chicks OUT! They haven't been back since.
    Unfortunately, I did let those Kirby freakazoids in. The first hour wasn't so bad, rather entertaining actually. The second hour had me and Matt exchanging looks of "come on, when is he leaving?" And the 3rd hour was spent wondering IF the other Kirby people were EVER coming back to pick up the guy at our house! After Matt told me he'd seen them driving by the house a few times, I went outside to flag them down.... and they were parked down the street - staking out our house. SO CREEPY!

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  4. Matt's description of turning everything off and hiding when the Jehovah Witnesses came brought back many childhood memories! Not only did we hide and not go to the door, but growing up in town (until I was 12)gave me the experience of being one of the neighborhood children who would run from one back yard to the next like Paul Revere warning the other neighbors that "The Jehovah Witnesses are coming, the Jehovah Witnesses are coming." We also had the Mormons going door to door in our neighborhood back then.

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