The Old Hard Sell
I suppose I should have known better and not have been so naive. Surely. Ok, if truth was to be told, I probably did know better. I am a man of three score and ten, so I should have been dubious and refused the request. Doggone it, I should have been a whole lot smarter. But… For a moment there my resolve weakened and said OK. And the groundwork for the “incident” was laid.
I guess a little background is in order: We get a lot of phone calls here at the house from unknown (to us) callers. The caller id said various things, none of which were names of people we know or stores we do business with – doctors, dentists, business places, etc. So we usually let the answering machine pick up and usually the caller hangs up without a message. I figure most were sales calls. Unless, of course, it’s political in nature and those critters ALWAYS have something to say. So when we got a call from someone who purported to be an insurance agent from a company we HAD done business with in the past, we listened to their message a bit closer. Actually this was about the third or fourth call leaving us a message from this company (we’re fast on the delete key) and was the first one we really listened closely to. It was from a life insurance company that we had a policy or two with and they wanted to “update their records” on us.
Uh-huh, the ol’ “update your records” ploy.
In retrospect, of course it was a bit fishy. We hadn’t moved our residence or changed our phone number in decades.
They should have known that. Obviously.
In any event, they apparently caught us in a weak moment and we called them back. They didn’t want to update their records about us over the phone and, of course, that was another red flag. They wanted to come to our house.
Living possibly still in that weak moment, I agreed and set up an appointment to talk with them a few days later.
To speak well of this company, which in all fairness I feel compelled to do, we had dealt with one of their representatives a few years ago and were more than happy with her. This saleslady was upbeat, friendly, more than happy to go over all our life insurance policies and especially over our policy with her company. When she patiently explained some facts to us, we changed some things and gave her more business. It was a fine interaction and it left a good impression of the company. And a good taste in our mouth. I’ve sold stuff in the past and have studied in college what makes a good salesman. She was one of the good ones.
A few days later the doorbell rang and we opened it to the new representative of this company and he was DEFINITELY not one of the good ones.
Please bear with me as I’m going to try to remain calm for the rest of this blog although it isn’t going to be easy. Here we go…
Salesman X came into the house and with him was Trainee Y. The salesman was pudgy and irritated looking with wrinkled business clothes with a sour aura of peevishness. I got the impression that his being in my home was not his idea of a pleasant thing to do on this glorious day. They swept in like Captain Bligh upon his quarterdeck with his lieutenant and barked a question about where he could plug in his laptop. I led them to our dining room, turned on the main lights and helped him power his computer.
He did not look friendly in any aspect and the scowl on his face never left for the duration of their stay.
It reminded me of someone who smelled something foul.
I laid our policy with his company next to him on the dining room table and attempted to make some small talk while he booted up his laptop. He mostly ignored my attempts at conversation. Finally he must have reached our records on his computer when he started into a sales pitch. I stopped him soon enough and politely asked what updates they needed from us. I reminded him that was what he was there for. Apparently (I’m sure you saw this coming) they really didn’t need an update, this was a sales call. He ignored my query and started on with the sales pitch and then asked something about “neither one of you has been sick recently, right?” and he glared at us. I told him I had a heart attack about two years ago followed by bypass surgery. This would have been a good time for any decent salesman to offer some words of sympathy and compassion. Instead he looked at me like I’d crawled out from under a rock and flatly said “we couldn’t do anything for you”, then turned his attention to my wife, utterly ignoring me. He stated that for X number of dollars, which amounted to about 3 times what we were paying for her present policy, he could cover her “nicely” and her final expenses would be fully covered.
My wife and I looked at each other. Her face was red and she was struggling to speak. I told Salesman X that this was not anything we wanted and that we were retired, living on a fixed income and just couldn’t afford it. He snorted and did some recalculations. He then said, “for this new amount she could get mostly covered.” I think he referred to the insurance as the “silver -level” coverage where the previous quote was for the “gold-level”. This number was still about double what we were paying.
My wife was still shaking her head no and I could feel her vibes for me to get rid of this toad when I said to the salesman that we were OK with what we had and that we would not be interested in any upgrades that day. I suggested that perhaps we were done with this visit.
He then grunted some more, did some more calculations on his scratch sheet and said for this new lesser amount, the “bronze-level” or something like that she could… and then he went on and on with more of the high pressure pitch. My face was then as red as my wife’s when I finally said “Enough! This visit is OVER! Pack up your crap and get out!”
Yes, I yelled at him. I yelled at him to leave my house immediately, called him a few choice expletives then walked to the door and held it open. I told him as he left to NEVER call us or come to the house again.
I’ve only been angrier a couple other times in my life. I literally wanted to kick him as he was leaving and only JUST held back. He was SUCH a loathsome example of a human being. So smug and condescending to us “little folks” it seemed. We were SO stupid not to want his largess.
I definitely wanted to report him to his company for his disgusting visit. When I looked out on the internet to find who to gripe to I began to read in the Better Business site all the other remarks from all the other people who had the same sort of interaction with this company’s salesmen. There were even many stories of people who tried to sell for this company and how they got shafted and belittled themselves. I figured my little message would just get lost in the clutter of the dozens (hundreds?) of other tales of misery.
I still find it difficult to recall that visit without muttering curses under my breath. That bastard was SUCH a prime example of the disgusting hard-sell S.O.B.
And kicking him out of my house while yelling at him felt SO DAMN GOOD!
If it weren’t for the dynamite sales girl who had visited us earlier and treated us so well, I’d tell you the name of the insurance company right now. But, if the impossible is still possible and she is still working for them, I think I’ll let the name go. She needs all the help she can get.
Just a hint though. This company is NOT represented on TV by a duck or a gecko.
