All American Steak & Seafood
Maurice Bird, Moe Bird Fast-talking door-to-door sales of cheap frozen meat at high prices

A fast-talking guy calling himself Moe Bird from a company called All-American Steak & Seafood came to our front door on Thursday, September 15, selling meat out of a truck at what he claimed were great prices. My wife, Uvonne, had once bought some meat from a guy who had come to our house that way and thought it was a good deal, and thought these were different people from the same company.

I was asleep sick in bed and my wife was suffering from a migraine and didn't know how to deal with the guy so she got me out of bed and I pulled on some pants and went into the living room to talk with the guy at the door. I would have told him to go away as I do with any other fast-talking scammer, but my wife said he had really good deals (she still thought he was from the same company as the last guy who had come to our door selling meat,) so I invited him in. He called in another guy, and the next thing I knew they were carrying in box after box of frozen meats.

The guy started talking about his meat and the prices he could offer us: $500, $400, $2 a pound, buy several cases and get a free freezer, "buy 1 get one" (I'm still not sure if that meant "buy one get one free" or "buy one get one for half price, " and so many other offers spat out in a few minutes that it was hard to figure out what he was actually offering.

I just wanted to go back to bed. I sat at the table and rested my head on my hand and my elbow on the table to keep myself from falling over. I have not been this sick in ages and could barely stay awake, never mind make sense of the guy's mile-a-minute patter, and neither could my wife with her headache.

The guy said he would give us a free freezer to store all the meat he wanted to sell us! I said no, that we were not going to buy that much meat. He wanted us to buy several cases of meat and we said we would not buy that much from him.

We tried to tell him we did not want meat with bones, that we ate more kinds of meat than just beef, that we liked chicken, and sausages and pork chops, and he said he had those and had the other guy bring up more and more boxes of meat until our dining table was covered with boxes and packages.

I'm not a steak eater. I think I last bought a steak to cook more than 5years ago. When I get red meat it's usually the cheapest frozen groundbeef or maybe a rump roast to cut up and stew for anhour or so. I eat steak so seldom that I don't even know how to tell onecut from another. The shrink-wrapped frozen lumps he showed us could have been anything.

I said we didn't have enough room, and the other guy said something like, "Oh I can get it all in, " and began taking the meat out of the boxes and packing our freezer with the packages of frozen meat before we paid or even said we were going to buy anything.

I could not think straight and did not want to make decisions, so I reluctantly got on the computer, looked up our account, and worked out how much money we had to spend on bills and mortgage, and told my wife that we only had $419 left for discretionary expenses like gas for the car, groceries, clothes, and everything else for the next 2 weeks until I get paid again. After I told her how much we had, I went back to bed. I was so tired that I was asleep within seconds.

I think the guy overheard me because he adjusted his price down to $399, and then talked my wife into writing a check for that amount within 5 minutes and then they left. My impression was that they hardly stopped talking during the entire 45 minutes they were here.

Finally able to get out of bed a day later, I added up the weights of the meats they sold us and found that our $399 had bought 36 pounds of meat, for an average price of $10.93 per pound. Maybe that is a good price for some very expensive steak, but not for a mixture of various kinds of beef, pork chops (with bones in we discovered later,) marinated chicken breasts, and sausages.
We called Mr. Bird to cancel the order Friday afternoon and he said that he could not give us our money back get this because he had already processed the check. What? He can't write his own checks?

On Saturday, feeling more clear-headed, I looked at the papers Mr. Bird had given us as a receipt, and the small print said that for home solicitation sales we had 3 days to cancel our order via written notice. I wrote them a letter with a notice to cancel the order, using the same phrases in their small print. I mailed the letter and made several more calls, but no one ever responded to me.

It's been more than a week now, so I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and, well, here at the complaint. If I do get a response from the company, I'll write a follow-up to this one.

Company: All American Steak & Seafood
Country: USA
State: California
City: SCOTTS VALLEY
Address: 59 OLD EL PUEBLO RD STE J
Phone: 8318548115

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