Bella Vista

Today, I fought back!

At about 6:00 pm today, I was trying to get dinner and enjoy my evening and my doorbell rang. I went outside and surprise it was a solicitor. After the last few days of discussions on the web side I felt like telling this guy off. I started with a no thank you and your in a non soliciting neighborhood and he replied ''I'm not soliciting. I'm checking how your Fios is working out.'' I told him I don't have Fios so he is soliciting and asked him why they come around in the evening when people were getting home and trying to spend time with their families? He said something under his breath and then said have a nice day and started down the sidewalk. I responded with ''it will be a nice day when the sheriff throws his as@ out of here for soliciting in a posted no soliciting neighborhood, and because of situations like this I would never order his service''. He couldn't get back in his car fast enough and thought he was being cute as he drove by and honked his horn until he realized I was taking a picture of his tag. Come to think of it he didn't have any uniform or clothing on with a Verizon logo. Probably some contracted help but at least he left the community! I am not a hostile person but when I saw it was a solicitor, my adrenaline started pumping and I almost wanted a heated argument or more with him. I'm almost looking foward to Jehova Witness knocking on my door tommorow! Before you think I'm some wacko-I'm really not. Just a homeowner who is tired of interuptions at my home. I paid alot of money to be in a community with restrictions and I don't feel like taking anymore solicitors ringing my doorbell interupting my life.....

Okay, here's what to do. First thing you ask is for some i.d. A company badge would be the first and then maybe a driver's license to verify the company badge. Then, request the at the solicitor allow the discussion to be videotaped, just so you don't miss something in the presentation. The last part if you have time and have a video camera handy and want to do this. We could then post the videos up here on the web via YouTube or somewhere for all to see. Maybe even have a video release form for the solicitor to sign. If armed with all this maybe the solictor will have second thoughts. Also, we need to have some type of phone contact program whereby you call the next person on the block in the direction this person is headed to warm this neighbor.

What a world we live in today. Used to be we had all the time in the world and we welcomed a chat with an occasional solicitor that might even sell us something we needed.

Get this new crazy format they installed here yesterday. I tried sending them an email complainging that I liked the old format better but I got an error. I will keep trying.

Hi everyone, I'm new to the neighbor we just moved in the 1st of march 2008.  I have to say I have lived here almost 3 weeks and we have had at least every week 3-5 ADT people knocking on our door trying to sell us a system and upgrades and so on. 

 They can be a bit of a pain. :)

I don't know if I'm the first or not but, a giant Welcome to the neighborhood.

Here's my experience on the alarm system pre-installed in the house. It's got a Guardian lable on it but when I called an operator gave me a locak number of another company. I call and a girl takes my name and number and says someone will call me back. I get a call back from an installer who was astounded that a homeowner was wanting information on programming his alarm system himself. I tell him I know a few things about electronics and was not afraid of diving into this. We chat on the phone for around 20 minutes, he gives me the code to program the new keypad into the system but I still get an 'open ckt' error. He then says I'll have to check all the wiring to make sure it's connected. I say I will and I'll call him back again. I get around to checking everything and find one alarm sensor not working on a window so I fix that. One other loop had an open and I fixed that. I call this guy back as I have his number on the alarm panel manual and he now won't give me any information other than to call the main business number back and schedule someone to come out and hook me up with 24 hour monitoring and a 2 year contract. I just hang up on him finding he's not as nice as he was in the previous conversation.

You see, some people might not want 24 hour monitoring so why the big deal? Now, I will tear out this alarm panel as it is programmed with an installer's code that I can't break so this panel is useless to me. I've found a system on eBay to take the place of this one for less than $100 not including the programming keypad which is another $60. As we always have someone at home we don't need monitoring and want to monitor the doors and windows ourselves. This installer could have been a lot nicer and gave me some info on that if he wanted to. People sure can suck.