Would You Buy An Air Purifier From This Man?

So last night we had a visit from the travelling air purifier salesman. Yeah, an air purifier salesman.

We sat through his little 20 minute presentation which was so good it seemed like a whole hour... and it was! The only reason we let this guy come over was because we had been called prior to his visit and were going to get a free 'gift' if we listened to his presentation.

I won't bore you with the details of his little presentation, but it basically came down to him trying to scare us with some shock headlines about how breathing will kill you and that benzene is bad. Then he showed us how dirty the air purifier had gotten in the half hour or so that it had been plugged in.

It was kind of dirty, but that's where he failed in the first place. He should have given it a wipe with his cloth to show us how clean it was to start so we'd have a baseline to guage how dirty it was when he had let it run. For all we knew, it hadn't been cleaned in 8 trips.

Suffice it to say, he didn't really scare us. Sure, it was a nice unit and if I had just won the lottery, I might have thought about parting with a bit of coin for something that would clean my house's air, but I didn't.

Oh, and here's the best part. The unit only cost $3100... but if we bought it that night while he was visiting, it would cost us a mere $2800.

The fact that we didn't just burst out laughing shows how much self-control we've gained in the past few years. After we told him that there was no way we were going to get one, we got our little gift, a flight for two anywhere in the US or Canada or a 3 night stay somewhere in Canada or the US. Whether we'll actually use it or not remains to be seen. It all depends on if we have to listen to a time-share presentation or not.

It was funny watching his reaction after we turned him down. He almost started stammering, 'B-b-but why wouldn't you want this amazing device for a mere $2800?' I've just cancelled my preorder on the Wii because I am trying to save a bit of money and it only costs $300. It was like he couldn't fathom that someone WOULDN'T drop $2800 on something they weren't shopping for and didn't really feel they needed on a whim. Maybe he's used to pitching his wares in higher income neighbourhoods than our's, but yeesh. We live in a townhouse in Acton. The thing is draftier than a sieve in a tornado. Like we need an air purifier.

After his initial attempts to woo us back to the purchase were met with us stonewalling him and asking for the survey so that he could get the heck out of our house (it was approaching 8pm at this point, I had a game I'd been itching to play all day and Garrett was still puttering about) he basically just shut down. Long gone was the chatty, charismatic salesman who wanted to save our lungs. In his place was a surly toddler who wasn't getting his way. I've seen the guys at work do this when they don't get their way, I'm sure that *I* do it when I don't get my way... heck, it's basic human nature. I just never expected to see a salesman do it right in front of the 'customers'.

Then he used our phone to call his home base and report that we didn't want his product. It was funny eavesdropping because he did this whole, "I just don't get it. They liked the presentation and thought it was a good unit, but they just don't seem to want to buy it and SAVE THEIR FAMILY FROM CERTAIN DOOM (or words to that effect)." He knew full well that we could hear him and was just trying a last ditch attempt to guilt us into signing away three grand, but it didn't work. I deal with more manipulative buggers than him every day at work, thanks.

After he left we made a vow that we would not let any more travelling salesmen into the house from now on. We've already had the travelling vacuum cleaner salesman, the bathfitter guys and now this dude. Forget it.

I refrained from launching into a diatribe about how I think that it's more the fact that we now live in hermetically sealed houses that don't breathe with the outside air coupled with our overuse of cleansers and antibacterial agents that is contributing to most of the maladies we see cropping up more and more often than the fact that we might get a bit of benzene oozing out of the walls every 5 years. It would have been like arguing with a fundamentalist. No matter what I'd say, he'd just refute it and get back on message.

Ah well. Made for an interesting and somewhat creepy evening.