I Lied, But It Was An Accident

Yesterday it was 17c below outside, and I was going to work anyway. Unfortunately, my schedule depends on a coworker of mine who drives us out to where ever we decide to work that day (territory.) Wednesday night he went out late, so he came to pick me up at four in the afternoon. The weather was worse, 19c below with large blowing snowflakes. It didn't make sense to work by this time anyway. So instead of going to work and making money, we go play pool and spend money. Good thing it was pay day.
Today we can't work again. See, these complaints that you make to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) actually have an effect. Believe it or not, the companies actually care about their image and that their customers aren't lied to.
Communication is my job. It's all I do. I learn how to communicate in a way that every customer will easily understand and mostly agree. But it's probably not your job.
So when I come to your house, and you tell me to talk to your wife because she takes care of it, that's what I'll do. I'll also possibly assume that she can either fill you in after I leave, or that you don't care. So I might not give you every detail.

Not all couples work that way, though. After I leave your house, it's likely that your wife with be happy with maybe a little proud of her decisions. She'll begin to explain and you will begin to fill gaps and you're not happy. Then you go on to drill her, asking exactly what went on and what I said to her. She'll be embarrassed and feel swindled, becuase she thought you'd be happy. As a result, she'll obviously blame the one person in the situation that she won't have to face; me. So she tells you I said I was from somewhere else like the government or something, and she didn't know. I must have lied. Now you find out that I was lying and must be scamming people out of money all over the place! What an injustice! Something should be done aobut this.
Next, you call the company that I was really from and cancel everything. You're short with the girl on the other side of the phone. "What can I do to make sure other homeowners will be safe from this a**hole?" you ask yourself. "The OEB! Of course!" You dial quickly once you've found the number online. You tell them all the details of the lies that I told you.
Have you ever wondered what happens next???
Now the OEB contacts this company you've complained about. The remind them that not following all of the regulations could cost them their licence, and practically close the entire functionality of the business. They speak directly to the CEO of the company with the exact details you gave them.
Now the CEO will contact a sales director, who will contact a distributor, who will contact a manager, who will contact the agent. And down the pecking order it goes, the blame, the stress and the frustration. In the end, I did my job the exact same way as in every other house, and will loose 4 days of work and pay because of a misunderstanding.
Hopefully a good agent will learn from this. We learn never to take the customer's word for it, and to repeat repeat repeat. There's nothing worse than losing money because the customer misunderstood, or misrepresented to another person in the household.
Hopefully a good customer will learn too. Listen, ask questions, and get all the information that you AND your co-homeowner. If you're ever worried that you've been lied to, you should ask a customer service representative employed the company that the agent represented. The calls are recorded, so you know you'll get the whole truth and nothing but.
I really hope that at least one person reads this and finds it useful. It is so frustrating for an agent to know that he or she was fully honest with a customer, and leave the house feeling good, only to find that the customer cancels, or even worse, complains. I know for a fact that the products and services provided to this customer by my coworker were such that hundreds of dollars would have been saved yearly.

Inspired

I am living the door-to-door dream. I have the answer to all the questions that every homeowner asks after I've left their house and the door has closed.

I was inspired to write this blog by a series of frustrating events. It began at a door, as it seems all things do in my life now. I walked up the snowy steps, binder in hand, and pushed the doorbell. A shiver ran down my spine as I wondered if this was a working doorbell house or a non-working doorbell house. I observed all the junk in the front yard. Trinkets that someone behind the door had convinced his or her self were important. I sighed, realizing that this was a non-working doorbell house, and knocked on the door through my fuzzy mittens. Hearing footsteps, I readied myself for whatever was behind this door. The door opened, and in an instance I had the woman sized up. She was thin, mid forties, and business-like. She huffed like a bull in an arena, and I was wearing red today. A race had begun. I had to reach "my happy place" before she could decide what to say, or her angry words meant for whatever she hated about her life would be absorbed by me, an Innocent by-stander. "Get to the beach!" I told myself. Not fast enough, her mouth was open and her voice box blaring at me. Something about having no right to be on her property, single mother, too busy... any of the many excuses that are supposed to justify her making me the scape-goat for every of life's problems. I turned and walked away before she could catch her breath and move into a second sentence about how awful I am.
As I moved on to the next house, a few thoughts crossed my mind. Before visiting her doorstep, I had visited her neighbours. It just turned out that I had managed to save her neighbour something like two hundred dollars per year. Maybe if she had let me get a word in I could have done the same for her. And, beyond that, if I had spoken to her like that, she probably would have called the cops or something. But she thinks if she never sees me again, why not accuse me of being the devil? Some courage that must take.
The next day, a friend of mine had a customer call him to cancel everything he had sold her only minutes earlier. Oh, the wonderful world of the Internet. She had done her research, found one complaint about the company online, and decided that my friend was a liar, a scam artist, trying to rip her of and ruin her life.
At this point I really couldn't take it any more. Someone has to speak for all those people trekking around living their lives in front of your doors. Someone has to tell you that just because one person did their job wrong at the door, doesn't mean we all do. Also, that one person giving you a bad first impression does not mean the whole company is a scam. How does the company know what this one person is saying? I get so frustrated hearing these stories and complaints, because almost all of them could be prevented by a little bit of education.

So, since no one else is out here, opening the door so you can see the other side, I guess I'll do it. I'll try to be here every day, giving up little bits about the secret life of a direct marketer.
Questions or comments about your experience with agents, or as agents? YES PLEASE!!!

By the way, it's 17c below today, and I'll still be out there, knocking away... hope to see you behind the next door!