An inside look at what fuelled door-to-door sales ban
Long-overdue clampdown on scam-ridden marketing practice takes effect in Ontario
As of Thursday, Ontario has banned the door-to-door sales of most household appliances, such as furnaces, air conditioners and water softeners.
Well, hallelujah. This is wonderful news, though overdue. Not a week goes by that this newspaper doesn’t receive a phone call or email from a consumer who felt deceived at the door by a sales agent who has left them trapped in a long-term contract they didn’t understand, for a product they likely never needed.
Some of the cases we’ve brought to readers are heartbreaking: widows with dementia who are fooled into buying furnaces and air-conditioners, sometimes more than once; homeowners tricked into buying water softeners in a city that already has soft water; liens slapped on houses when consumers refuse to pay these outrageous costs on 10-year leases that are impossible to break; deception about “rebates” and savings or touting fictitious relationships with reputable companies such as Enbridge.
It goes on and on. It is just so infuriating to hear about vulnerable, low-income citizens being preyed upon on their own doorsteps.
The Ministry of Government and Consumer Services has moved cautiously. It introduced the enabling legislation in 2016, gave it royal assent in April 2017, then spent months in “consultation” with stakeholders about how the actual regulations would work.
On Feb. 23, it announced the ban on door-to-door sales would begin March 1, but only on certain kinds of products: air cleaners, air conditioners, air purifiers, duct-cleaning services, furnaces, water filters, water heaters, water purifiers, water softeners, water-treatment devices and any combination thereof.
The government also says any contract signed in the home will have a 10-day cooling off period during which the agreement can be cancelled without any penalty.
The tougher regulations begin only days after a former employee of one of these companies sent the Citizen an email providing an insider look at everyday practices.
Kevin Bertsch, who lives in Toronto, used to work in customer service for a company that sold thousands of dollars of equipment to a west-end Ottawa woman, so much that the total buyout on the 10-year agreement was $54,000 — many, many times the value of the appliances.
(She also had liens slapped on her home.)
“My job was supposedly customer service, and at first, I bought the company line that everything was explained to the customer, and they had a 10 day cancellation period, so if they were still in the deal, that was the customer’s choice,” he writes.
“However, as I took phone call after phone call from people who had been flat out lied to (‘Oh, this water softener will save you so much in dishwashing liquid and shampoo it will pay for itself !’ — I don’t know anyone who spends $60/month on dishwashing liquid and shampoo). Other scams were to tell people they qualified for a string of non-existent rebates that would mean the purchase would be no net cost to them.”
Bertsch, 60, explained in an interview Thursday how the corporate structure worked. The sales agents worked solely on commission and were not actually employees of the firm named in the contract, but part of a separate marketing team. Meanwhile, all the servicing was farmed out to other firms, as was the financing.
Bertsch said one call in particular made him question the legitimacy of his work.
“In one case I handled, they sold over $400/month worth of contracts to an old woman with dementia, whose sole source of income was her Canada pension. Because of her age, we insisted on having a second person under the age of 75 on the phone, and the agents put her mentally disabled son on.
“I thought the deal sounded suspect, and ordered a follow-up call to confirm the sale, but the person who made the follow-up call just rubber stamped it. The next week, I got a call from her daughter who was in tears wondering how they would pay this, and wondering why, in February, we would sell her a brand-new furnace when she just had one put in the previous October!”
Bertsch explained that teams of sales agents would fan out in a particular part of town, with installation teams in the neighbourhood ready to put in equipment before the customer could change his or her mind.
The government has put some teeth in the regulations. Individuals who break the law can face maximum fines of $50,000 or jail time, and corporations can be hit with $250,000 fines.
The ministry encourages those with complaints about doorto-door sales to call 1-800-8899768.