One granny rescued

Got a call from my grandmother this afternoon… "There’s an Optus salesman here and I’m about to sign a broadband contract!  Do you want to come over and see if you want to sign up too?"

Panic alarms go off.  My grandmother understands so little of computers she still doesn’t understand that programs are not physical pieces of hardware, and can’t understand why she DOES need the internet to update her virus scanner, but she DOESN’T need it to run the scan. 

The salesman was an Indian fellow with such a thick accent I could understand maybe half to two-thirds of what he said.  And he made the whole process take forever with his continual dishonesty.  He’d actually convinced my poor gran to switch from a landline-and-mobile bundle to a landline-and-broadband bundle by telling her dishonestly that her mobile would be covered as well.  She’d actually signed the contract before I could really talk to her.  As the salesman was ringing to confirm the sale, she snatched the contract out of his hands.  She’d just realised that the monthly fee which sounded so all-inclusive actually didn’t cover most of her calls. 

It was another half hour before I could get the guy to leave.  He was so rude!  He kept pretending that I’d misunderstood what he was trying to sell.  Then he’d go on a great spiel about what the offer actually was, and how marvellous it thus was, and after repeated questions from me, he’d admit that I’d had it right all along.  Then he’d pretend that he’d agreed with me all along.  And when I finally told him we weren’t interested, we weren’t buying anything today, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, but started arguing instead. 

Both my grandmother and I were completely stressed out by the end of it.  I really hope she’s learnt something from this.  I won’t even speak to a telco salesperson these days.  Saves a lot of stress and strife.  If they were polite, honest and straighforward, it might be a different matter.  But really, most of these big telco’s aim their marketing strategies toward the easily befooled and the easily fast-talked.