A few months ago a person showed up at our home stating that they were running a sweepstakes to win a $100 in free gas if we answered a few questions about the environment. My husband answered the questions and filled out the ticket and entered the drawing. Unfortunately, he is not as skeptical as I am. About a week later, we get a call from a woman from Rainbow Systems who said we won the $100 in free gas and all we needed to do was let her do a short demonstration of the air purification system. She showed up with a small round humidifier that she added fragrant oil to and it was nice. She said she was not here to sell us anything but ask our opinion as to the item. She NEVER mentioned anything about being a sales woman or that she was with Rainbow.
After her 20 minute demonstration on this air purifier she gave us our $100 gas voucher, which was a joke, as you had to do all this online signing up, spend $100 in a 30 day period, then send in your receipt and you had to do this 4 months in a row, getting a $25 gift card each month for your $100 purchase of gas each month. Also, you could not use receipts that showed separate gas purchases within like 2 or 3 days of one another. It was way too much work. She had also promised (when she initially called us) a free vacation. The free vacation consisted of 2 or 3 free hotel nights, not even in our state. No airfare, no theme park or attraction tickets. We could not afford to get to the hotels to even use this.
Oh, well, I thought, for a 20 minute demo, no harm done. However, when she gathered some of her stuff up and I thought she was going to leave, but she headed out to the car and came back in with a large box. Needless to say, this ended up being a 2 hr demonstration of her Rainbow Systems Air Purification and Cleaning System (which she said this was her first demonstration on her own and her boss said 2 hrs was how long it should take.) Also, during her 20 minute presentation, she wanted us to write down people who would be interested in her demonstration of what we thought was just the little air purifier, and we could get the little air purifier for free. I didnt think anything of this because I thought after the 20 minutes she was done. Then she wanted me to call them and set the appointments for her, basically. I pretended to call and get voice mails.
If anyone is reading these that does sales, these kinds of tactics make me not want a product just because of the deception involved. If you have to con me into seeing your product, you and your product cant be trusted. After all was said and done, she wanted to sell us this thing for $2,000. It was nice, but not $2,000 nice. My advice, dont let anyone into your home for this kind of crap. If something is good enough, it should be able to sell itself without a home invasion and deceptive tactics. Also, companies should learn not to embarrass themselves with these pathetic freebies they offer.
0 comments