Buyer Beware of Contractors

[Cypress]

I went to a Garden Show in March. This year, I have planned to have a new roof installed, gutters and restore my chimney. At the show, I spoke with a contractor from Gutter Helmet as well as other larger commercial roofing contractors. On Friday afternoon, I received a startling call from a sales man at Gutter Helmet confirming a Saturday appointment. I never made one and had to tell him twice do not come to my house. Granted I spoke with someone at the show, but do not recall fixing any appointment.

I checked phone messages and found a voice message from the same company a few hours earlier saying the same thing. The salesman double checked but the 800 phone service just made the appointment without confirming I was available. Buyer Beware. No wonder folks are leery of speaking and giving out personal info at shows, you get pushy sales people months later.

As I had not heard from any company I spoke with at the Garden Show, I went ahead and found a qualified roofer and took care of this on my own time. I am still ruffled at the thought of some guy showing up. If I hadn't answered my phone at that moment, he would have been knocking on my door Saturday. So, this company managed to annoy me and I am telling others to think twice about calling for service. Who trains sales people to be so pushy? The marketing strategy only pushed away a client and whoever else cares to listen to me.

[Mrs-M]

Yeah, one thing we never do is give our name (last), our address, or any other personal info when out and about. When/if someone gets pushy, off we go. Glad things never escalated out of control with you and this situation.

[Float On]

Even if you didn't give the show rep your info if you had to register when you walked into the show your data went into a file. The promoter then turns around and sells the 'buyer list' to the exhibitors for $20-$50 or so depending on the type of show it is. Then the exhibitors can treat anyone who walked in the door of the show as a 'possible lead' and in anything dealing with construction right now they really are being pushy since business is slow.
So glad you caught it before someone showed up on your doorstep - yikes!

[sweetana3]

We had a need for some new windows and had two different companies come out. So very different. The one used a salesman to give us the hard sell tactic of "only today is the sale price good and you need to sign right now". The other man owned the company and would not let us sign until we had a complete and almost 6 page contract of specifications in our hand and understood what we were signing. I was amazed at the quality of his overall presentation. Turns out he has the same quality of workers and review of final product. He really wanted us to be happy and a good reference.

I have never ever had such a positive experience. Since I was so happy, we referred a neighbor who was also well satisfied and then we referred him to our whole historic neighborhood to present his products and services. He learned a lot about historic work, got some new work and we praise him highly. We gave him another job and he will do our roof.

It is wise to be aware of sales tactics and how they are used. Car dealers are not the only ones to try them.

Once we needed a mover. I got three estimates and went with the highest since they were the most professional presentation. They were fantastic and we used them and referred them several times after that. The other estimates were vague, not in writing, and not professional.

[Cypress]

Thanks for the support. I am confused about the practicality of aggressive sales. If I had a awkward moment and shared that with others, how much business does the company lose over time? I would guess plenty. Yes there are thousands of us out here who need service from time to time. Do people respond to pushy sales?

If that guy had shown up on my doorstep, I am uncertain what the expectation from the customer would have been? Not to pick on MBA's, but this sounds like not so clever theoretical MBA tactics. I can say this as I worked at a college in an MBA program.