Summer sales have become very popular in Utah. Last year, Provo-based security sales company APX Alarm estimated its student workforce at 3,500. Considering Pinnacle Security claims an average income of $22,000 per employee, selling door to door over a summer can be pretty alluring for broke college students. However, that number probably includes office managers who make overrides of all sales made by subordinate employees.
Once again, it’s the time of year when recruiters are out looking for salespeople and technicians to labor away their summer months. But before you sign up, be warned8212;it might not be everything that you’ve been told.
Take a look at APX’s Better Business Bureau Web site, and you’ll find that not all representatives of this door-to-door company are necessarily on the up and up. Also, KSL Ch. 5’s Debbie Dujanovic did a story a few months ago on shady summer sales companies.
Sam Simister, a former employee of Icon Security’s call center, said that while verifying a sale, the employees would often hear the salesperson assure the customer that there was no contract at all, while they were in fact signing a long-term one8212;an outright lie in an effort to secure sales.
The nature of door-to-door sales of any kind tends to be deceptive. It requires consumers to make quick decisions based on facts provided to them by a company that has something to gain from the information it provides. This is generally true of all sales, but the fact that the salesperson is in a person’s home forcing him or her to decide prohibits the customer from doing further research before making a decision. Also, because these representatives are only in an area for months at a time, the practice of collecting prospective clients is virtually nonexistent. This often leads to pressure-related sales tactics.
Many who have done summer sales might be thinking, “We don’t force them to sign anything.” Of all the arguments used to defend door-to-door sales, this is the worst. Technically, it’s true. The consumers sign the contract of their own volition. Whether or not the consumers had honest and complete information regarding its contents is an entirely different matter. You can play semantics all day long, but it’s not going to change the fact that there are countless consumers that are completely misled each summer by sales representatives.
Most often, customers are made to believe that they have the ability to cancel their two- or three-year contract at any time. This is true, but only with a cancellation fee that can sometimes soar upward of $700, a fact that is conveniently excluded from the sales pitch. As a technical support supervisor with the now defunct Atlas Marketing (a Satellite TV door-to-door company), I spent most of my time dealing with customers who were told by their salesperson that there was no cancellation fee, and that they were free to terminate service at any time without repercussion.
These companies also often formulate a standard sales pitch that has two components:
First, the salesperson must create the value of a product. Second, offer a deal that appears to be unique. A popular variation of this technique in security system sales sounds like this: “In response to the rising crime trend in your area, we are giving residents this special deal.” So now that you’ve scared the bejesus out of the customers, you present them with a limited-time-only deal to protect themselves from the recent rash of burglaries in their neighborhood. Perhaps this sits fine with you. But what happens next?
The Louisiana Fire Marshal issued two cease and desist orders against APX in 2008, because of technicians (who are also seasonal employees) who “performed multiple installations of security systems that were of such poor quality, it significantly and adversely affected the effectiveness of the systems.”
There are people who don’t mislead customers and still make a large profit doing summer sales. But do you really want to sign up for a summer of working in an industry that has become saturated with claims of deception, poor workmanship and lack of stability?
John Hannon