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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

The biggest door to door I get is from roofing/window where they canvas the neighborhood when doing a neighbor's house. I don't see the types of door to door where a car would drop off a couple of people to cover an area any more though. The No Soliciting is just not even a concern for them. It's not like it is enforceable in any way than a possibly rude door slamming in their face, and who cares about that?

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"Hey, we're doing some work in your neighborhood and since our trucks and team are already there we can get you a great deal..."

I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow?

Or the other tactic where they say "you might have noticed my truck around as I've done some work for <neighbor> and will be at <other neighbor>'s house later..."

They name people whose door they knocked on, got their name, and likely rejected. But they use those names on other prospects which makes it sound like word of mouth, the best form of advertising! "Oh, if my neighbor is using this guy for <Service> he must be good"... Really a brilliant tactic that I bet fools some people.

The only guy I really admired (but didn't use because I thought his prices were far too high) was a guy going door to door offering to clean the outside windows. He wanted $10/window and I was like no way. I'm sure he got a few customers.

I can see how "we're in your neighborhood so we thought you might want to use our services while we're here" could work. When I first moved into my house a few years ago, I wasn't familiar with tactics used by door to door salespeople, so I legitimately thought they were in the neighborhood and to save them on a second trip, they were seeing if they could drum up some additional business.

It was only after just about every door-to-door salesman used that excuse that I clued in that he's probably just a sales guy going to random neighborhoods and not actually one of the workers on the ground doing the job. Anyway, my point is most people don't think about these things, and especially not new homeowners, and probably just take their word.

Regarding the $10/window guy: I've been meaning to get out the ladder and clean all my windows myself but have been lazy, so if somebody actually showed up at my door, quoted a price, and said they'd do it right then and there, I might take them up on the offer. It's really just a numbers game for them.

For me it would have been over $400 since I have over 40 individual windows. I’d do it for $150, maybe $200. But not $400. I’m guessing he was able to pull a few though.

As for the “in the area” thing, it sounds logical at first and I’ve heard of neighbors negotiating a discount by getting the same job done by the same vendor but for jobs that take a good while if not multiple days, it just doesn’t matter.

> I've never understood why anyone would think this would matter. Like they're camping in our neighborhood for the week and this saves everyone money somehow?

This seems obvious to me. My neighbours were getting their gutters cleaned and needed to come in to our garden, I asked the guys if they'd do ours as well. We didn't negotiate too hard on price, but I'm sure if pushed they would have taken something less than they'd charge to drive out and set up their equipment from scratch.

Maybe but probably not since they likely have jobs lined up for the next few months and aren’t about to work for less than they know they can get. It’s not like these guys are taking a horse and carriage 50 miles to a town to setup camp and try and sell out of whatever they’re peddling. They drive like 15 minutes. And they aren’t desperate for work.

Like a contractor like this wouldn't be willing to call up the customer they have scheduled next to say they were delayed for a reason other than what it actually was. However, on the flip side the expectation that they would drop everything just to service this one random request does seem a bit entitled.

What they would do is quote a much higher price since they’re aware the prospect isn’t price comparing and probably thinks they’re getting a deal because “they’re already here”. Why on Earth would they risk a higher priced job cancelling so they can do a lower priced job instead? lol! No. They will always do the better paying job first. If your contractor delays you it’s because another person is paying better.

I think you're assuming people are much more rational then they are in practice. Sure, if it were a company calculating all of those things, you'd be right. But I think it's not at all unlikely that a contractor would feel better doing an extra job close by, even for slightly lower pay, and even if they are delaying a slightly higher paying job farther away. Just like consumers have all sorts of biases that mean they don't always act in the most rational way, producers do to - especially individuals and small businesses.

Sometimes they actually do have equipment nearby, like a whole driveway repaving setup!

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