Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

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That's the thing. The article makes them implicitly sound like heroes - they sacrificed SO much for a dream, the dream of serving the customers. They're solar evangelists. The new generation of motivated do gooders. Wish everybody's child was like that!

But it's bs, I'm sorry. There's a reason nobody trusts door to door sales people. There's reason they target the elderly. There's a reason why they have a book-rack of sales techniques. There's a reason they're pushy and persistent and chameleons. And they get a significant paycheque for no actual service to the client.

I work from home with my father in law who's a curmudgeony grouch, yet once a week I have to leave a work call as I overhear them penetrating his defences. And then three weeks later there's an article in the local newspaper about X number of elderly scammed by door to door salespeople selling driveway repeir or duct cleaning or solar panels or roof replacement or whatever.

There is NO alignment of interest between you and the door to door salesperson. They have one goal and one goal only and that is making the sale. Nothing else is real, they're not your new buddy, and they will not be there for you after you sign.

(source - various ; I've been a home owner, have had family scammed, read a lot, and oh yeah, was a poor immigrant and went for several trainings to be door to door sales person and saw the insides of the machine)

> they will not be there for you after you sign.

This is an important part. Any promises about help in future, if they are not in writing, they mean nothing. What actually happens when you later call the person, is either they no longer work there (and no, the person who inherited their place is not going to honor the promises they made, you must have misunderstood), or they tell you that the condition for their help is you need to buy another expensive product first.

Right. It's unfortunately extremely common - even in-store clerk for major telecom swill make undeliverable promises and assurances; when it's a random, subcontracted, un-accountable stranger at your door, there's no limit to what they can say in the inherently he-said/she-said scenario.

There's NO earthly benefit to consumer to signing something from a door-to-door salesperson. You don't have the context, you don't have comparison, you don't have background, you don't have information, you don't have assurance or proof or trust or anything that it takes for you to make a beneficial decision. All you have are eroding defenses against a targeted onslaught. At best, at BEST, you'll get something you could've gotten with less risk and less pressure through regular channels. At worst - well, there's no upper limit to the worst. You may get a slightly more expensive regular product, or you may get a slightly subpar product, or you may end up in any number of various nightmare scenarios. There's just no upside.

I'm the nicest, politest, most conflict-avoiding person in real life, and known for it. And I hate that they push and push and push and make me turn nasty before they'll hear a "No".

My grandmother suffered Alzheimer’s, but wasn’t ready to leave her home, so my uncle moved in with her.

She called him at work to ask for her checkbook… two men had knocked on her door, convinced her that a tree on her property needed to be cut down, proceeded to cut it and leave it there, then demanded $400.

Uncle rushed home and ran these guys off, refusing to pay, but it was a dangerous scam. All it would have taken is one to distract her while the other helped himself inside the house.

Tree removal and tree trimming are generally different services. And $400 to cut down a tree is pretty typical.

Nothing about that story sounds like a scam to me.

To drop a, as far as we know, perfectly healthy tree and leave it in the yard?

We had a guy who was doing work in the neighborhood offer to take down a big beautiful Maple tree in our back yard. He tried to instill fear of the tree.

So many people are easily tricked into taking down perfectly healthy trees because they are big. What a loss.

Ya. If the tree is close to power lines or a roof it's often a good idea to cut it down before the next hurricane. This is super common

Getting it taken away is a different service and requires different equipment.

>>Nothing about that story sounds like a scam to me.

I mean, that's just... naivete? Lack of experience? Wonderful but unwarranted faith in nature of humanity? I was there once myself, so I empathize and understand it, but it's also dangerous.

First, there's no reason random people would be knocking on your door to cut a tree right then and there. EVERYthing about that story should sound like a scam, from the get go.

Second, I'm sure you CAN have tree cutting and removal as different services. As a consumer, why would you, but sure. But - do you really feel this was explained to the buyer ahead of time? Do you believe this tree needed cutting, based on the random strangers' authority? Why were random people walking around with chainsaws?

I get these guys on a weekly basis. "They were just walking down the neighborhood and noticed that [my gutters needed cleaning | my driveway is in disrepair | my roof can use a quick fix | whatever]". Literally every time, as I mentioned, there's an article in local newspaper few weeks later about elderly being scammed.

What honest, reputable businessperson, especially a skilled tradesperson, wastes their time knocking on doors? They are in so much demand they don't even need to advertise, word of mouth and referrals keep them overbusy. We'd all kill for a reputable contractor. Whoever knocks on your door in the middle of the day is not of that persuasion.

Are you in Florida? Trimming and removing trees prior to hurricane season is a completely reasonable thing to do. It's very common here.

The equipment for tree removal is different. A big truck with a crane that lifts debris into the back vs a bucket truck and chainsaws. And stump removal is a whole other thing.

Not every operation is big enough to own multiple trucks.

This is staggering to me for a different reason. Having a single tree cut down (and removed, which I guess they didn’t do) in our neighborhood costs in the vicinity of $4000-$10,000.

If you have a chainsaw, you can pick the tree, and you're not worried about where the tree will land (it's far enough from anything important), cutting down a tree is pretty quick work. Making it land in a small area is difficult, and removing it is laborious.

$4,000 to $10,000 for a single tree removal is incredibly high. In a very high cost of living area I can have a very large tree removed by a licensed insured removal company, the best in the area, for $1,500.

Are you in the Bay Area? NYC? Those are about the only places I could imagine paying $4k or more.

I suspect over the pandemic and lumber boom, a lot of qualified/insured/bonded arborists ended up getting forestry jobs and in-city arborists became scarce, temporarily anyway. Kinda like what happened to shipping container prices.

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