Burned At The Door

Burned At The Door -

Your sitting at home relaxing on the couch or perhaps watching TV when the door bell rings. Your not expecting someone and your doorbell seldom rings. You get up and go to the door to see if it is one of the neighbourhood children participating in a fund raiser selling cookies, raffle tickets or some other item.

We all try to help our neighbours children if we can but not everyone at the door has a sweet deal for you

Don't Get Burned at The Door

No matter how good or how time restrictive the offer seems to be it's your door and your decision.

Ontarians have learned, often to late, that the deal contains long term commitments or hidden penalties for early termination. One recent example here in Durham was some unscrupulous operators who stung homeowners who agreed to have their driveways paved by firms they had never heard of who seemed to be offering a very good deal.

A recent email forwarded by a family member contained a warning about how some door to door salemen operate.

While the Message was informative and appeard to be one of genuine concern.
I could not help but wonder who dreamed up this viral marketing scheme,
and how effective it could be.

Here is a copy of the email

Dear friends and family,

I've never been one for sending work-related emails to my friends and family, but I've just finished working on something that you might be interested in.  

As you probably know, I work for  xxxxxxxxx Home Comfort, which is one of Canada's largest home comfort and rental water heating companies.  Over the past few months we've been getting calls from customers about door-to-door sales people trying to get them to switch out their rental water heaters.  The problem is the deceptive approach we're hearing these doorknockers are using: 

•  
  • posing as the utility, the government or their own current rental water heating provider
  • telling them that the replacement is mandatory
  • misleading them with the promise of huge energy savings
  • telling them that their current provider has gone out of business

Many of these customers don't understand that they're being switched.  By the time the tank has been changed out, some of these customers are now locked in for up to 15 years, with huge penalties for early exit. And if the customers get upset about being misled and they switch back, they get charged hundreds of dollars.  I even saw one bill for $1,300!  The problem is that customers don't know what's going on in this industry, they're not asking many (or any) questions, they don't know their rights and they're not warning each other.

Enough is enough.  We've just launched a new website called burnedatthedoor.com.  We've created this online community so that people can get educated, learn about their rights and about their water heaters, post their own stories about doorknocking, register for email alerts, and warn family and friends (like I'm doing with you). 

If you've had these doorknockers at your door, or have heard about people who have, can I ask you to do 2 things? 

First, check out the website, and if you want to, go ahead and register for alerts and see if they've been spotted in your community.  And second, can you forward this email to everyone you think should know about this issue?  Our company has been doing a lot the past few months to warn people, and we're now finding that people are starting to ask the right questions of these companies!  This website is just one more way people can get information, because some customers are finding that ignorance can be expensive.

Hope all is well with you...drop us a line and tell us what's new!

Thanks,