Pyat and the Hard-Soft-Water-Sale

[pyat]

The interaction was as follows:

The sales rep ("Kathi") tried to get velvetpage to sign a purchase agreement tonight, saying that we will forfeit $4000 in special soap that she can give us, but ONLY IF WE BUY NOW. velvetpage asks to think about it till Friday. Fine, says Kathi, but you won't get the $4000 of soap.

I was putting the girls to bed when this was being said, but came down when I heard Kathi talking about signing. I'd also been in the living room for most of the pitch. I ducked out as soon as I'd seen the product samples, about 2 minutes in. Anyway, I stomped into the conversation like a surly dinosaur and told Kathi we would not be buying tonight.

I should note that my hair was disarranged and standing up, and I was generally wrinkled and untucked from wrangling the girls. Kathi didn't seem impressed by me. I should have been wearing an undershirt, carrying a beer bottle and smoking a stub of a cigar, to complete the picture of clumping male Archie Bunker stereotype.

(I should have growled, "I hear soft water is for homos and commies!")

Kathi objected that I'd not heard her sales pitch, or seen the demonstration. What she didn't know is that I'd been busily googling and doing price research in the living room while listening to her spiel in the kitchen. The bulk of reviews that struck me as detailed and informed were along the lines of "It works fine, but it very overpriced." And, I'd been turned off by her patronizing sales pitch, which was also rather misleading, as we shall see.

I told Kathi that we'd been told she was coming to test our water on behalf of a "community service organization." I told her that velvetpage had asked the appointment setter, point blank, if they were selling anything, and was told they were not.

Said Kathi, "Oh, I'm not selling anything. I'm here to demonstrate the problem with your water, and show you a solution that we have."

That comment made me very mad, and the following interaction was rather terse.

Sez I: "How much is it?"

Kathi: "$37 a month." (This is an outright lie - it is actually $97 a month. She knocked off $60 a month to represent the "savings" we'd realize from not using as much soap or skin lotion.)

Me: "For how long?"

Kathi: "120 months."

Me: "And we don't get the soap if we don't sign tonight?"

Kathi: *pause* "No."

Me: "Then we aren't getting the soap."

Kathi: "Do you know our warranty?"

Me: "Is it on the Internet?"

Kathi: "It's a lifetime warranty."

Me: (I mumbled something generally non-committal.)

Kathi: "You didn't see the demonstration and..."

Me: "I know we need a water softener, but I don't think we need a Rainsoft one."

Then I stumped along back upstairs, wishing I'd told her to leave as soon as the pitch started.

As she was leaving, Kathi privately told velvetpage that we could "probably" get the free soap if we referred someone.

Comments

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

That is so amazingly ridiculous.

And there is NO WAY that there's that much savings in soap. My Mom has very hard water here, and spends very little on soap.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

Hard water can actually get you cleaner under some circumstances - it doesn't dissolve as much dirt but the minerals actually scrub stuff off your skin. (The Wikipedia article says that it's harder to get soap off your skin with soft water, leading more water to be used.)

And we use about $4 in soap and shampoo a month. Yarly!

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

The type of soap probably is also a factor here. Soaps with moisturizers or perfumes and the like in them probably have material that doesn't rinse off as easily and the particulates in hard water might make it easier to sluice this material off your skin.

I use an organic liquid soap made from peppermint oil (http://www.drbronner.com/DBMS/PEP.htm), and it rinses off very nicely thank-you under our soft water.