Berlin – There is a golden rule: don’t talk to those particularly friendly strangers who ring the doorbell. Whether they want to sell you a vacuum cleaner or a Bible, just say: “Have a nice day” – and close the door.
Consumer advocates expressly warn against doing business on the doorstep. But in the New Year I always want to be particularly friendly, and the young man didn’t want to sell anything, just ask whether everything is working on our phone and the internet. Everything in the house had been converted to fiber optic cables. I had seen the man at the neighbour’s door shortly before, so I didn’t close mine right away.
He had a lot of questions and I had very few answers. “How high is your tariff … Do you have a 3 or 4-way router … Did you buy or rent one?” I was only able to say yes to the question of whether the Internet is slow.
He was verbose, friendly, and patient, but when he realized that I didn’t want to place an order with him for a new router, he let our conversation turn in a different direction. He said his company reimbursed us for the basic electricity price. It sounded like it was a service from my telephone company. So I looked for the electricity contract. And then he typed in our base price on his tablet. I looked at it secretly and understood: This friendly young man wants to talk me into a new electricity contract.
What if he has already changed the contract?
All of a sudden I felt very old and very senile, as if I had forgotten the golden rule. So I threw him out of the apartment in a very friendly but very firm manner.
As soon as the door was closed, a thought crept through my brain. What if he’s done something with the data? I don’t want a new contract. Not for the phone, not for electricity.
I ran after him to take a picture of his name tag. But he was gone. The neighbor said that he had asked the telephone provider to be on the safe side: “Everything is fine, at least with us. And a miracle happened: I was only on hold for three minutes. “
For me it was only two minutes. A friendly woman said, “Everything is fine. Nobody tinkered with your contract. You didn’t fall for any reason. “
She too had many questions and I still had only a few answers. She, too, was verbose, kind, and patient. It went back and forth for a while, and in the end I had a new phone contract. When I hung up, I asked myself: Didn’t I actually want to prevent someone from changing anything in the contract?
Immediately I had an excuse to reassure me: After all, I didn’t fall for doorstep selling. In addition, the year is still new.
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