Door-to-Door Sales Calls
Are Making a ComebackBy Jane Spencer
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Frustrated by consumers who slam down the phone, the nation's telemarketers have revived a tried-and-true technique to ruin your dinner hour: They are ringing the doorbell.
Dozens of companies, including AT&T Corp. and regional utilities, are unleashing armies of door-to-door sales representatives to pitch services such as phones, cable television and natural gas. Comcast Corp. registered 40,000 customers last year with its door-to-door "win back" campaign that involved wooing customers away from competition such as DirectTV.
The telemarketers' move is the latest effort to sidestep the growing barriers that include caller-ID and gadgets like the TeleZapper, a call-blocking device.
Last month, President Bush signed legislation to create a National Do Not Call registry that will allow consumers to register with the Federal Trade Commission; it will be illegal for most companies to call people on that list. More than two dozen states have also established such lists.
In Midwestern states including Michigan and Wisconsin, phone company SBC Communications Inc. has tried goodwill "meet-and-greets" where employees canvass neighborhoods to announce rate cuts. AT&T's new "feet-on-the-street" reps knock on doors selling local phone service. Cable provider RCN Corp. of Princeton, N.J., sends to homes a team of 400 sales agents wearing blue surgical booties (to avoid smudging the carpet).
When Glen Fest of Mesquite, Texas, heard his doorbell, he assumed it was his neighbor dropping by with leftovers or church gossip. Instead, he encountered "Adam" from AT&T who started pelting him with questions about how much he spends on local phone service. Within minutes, Adam got what he came for: Mr. Fest's signature to switch his service to AT&T from SBC.
"I'm just too darn polite," says Mr. Fest, who finds it much easier to hang up on a telemarketer than to "slam the door in some guy's face."
The house calls are coming as companies try to gain an edge in markets that have recently opened to new competition such as local telephone, cable and energy. Cable companies say the door-to-door technique works well in their industry because consumers like instructions on setting up and using high-speed Internet connections.
RCN, which has been doing door-to-door sales since the late 1990s, says it gets about 35% of its business through housecalls in the eight states where it operates. The company pays some apartment managers in New York and Chicago to alert them when new customers move in. It also recently trained more than 600 technicians to try to sell new products when they come to make repairs. In New York's Queens borough, the company's two dozen representatives speak nine languages, including Tagalog and Urdu.
The rush of uninvited guests is spurring some complaints to regulators. In Texas, where electricity companies such as Centrica have launched door-knocking campaigns during the past year, the state public utility commission has seen complaints over deceptive energy sales triple. In Illinois, the complaints to the Consumers Utility Board about deceptive natural-gas contract sales jumped from a handful in 2001 to nearly 700 last year after companies began selling door-to-door.
Consumer advocates in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Utah and Colorado also have seen complaints pile up. In Illinois and Texas, customers complained that sales agents gathered their signatures under false pretenses -- such as telling them they were signing a petition -- and used the signatures to "slam" them by switching their energy companies.
This past summer, Michael Nahm of Cicero, Ill., received a natural-gas bill from a company he had never heard of. He learned that a salesman from Santanna Energy Services of Austin, Texas, had stopped by and convinced his 16-year-old daughter to authorize a gas company switch by suggesting that she forge her father's signature, according to Mr. Nahm. Santanna declined to comment specifically on Mr. Nahm's case but said it has stopped door-to-door sales.
Visits by more established companies, like AT&T and cable providers RCN and Comcast have generated few complaints with state regulators. These companies put their representatives through strict training programs before they are allowed to hit the streets (AT&T reps are taught never to ask to use the bathroom).
In most states, door-to-door representatives must heed strict rules to provide customers with a copy of any contract they sign, and inform them that they have a three-day window during which they can cancel the new contract.
Despite the attempts at better behavior, many residents would prefer to live without the interruptions. Linda Whitcomb of Dallas switched her family's electric service after a door-to-door representative convinced her that her husband, who pays the family bills, would be thrilled. "They said, 'Oh, your husband will just give you a big kiss because you'll be saving so much money,'" says Mrs. Whitcomb.
Instead, he threw a fit -- and promptly switched the service back. "I'm just not good at slamming the door," she says.
Damnit
Someone give me a shotgun......
