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gooberfaced t1_ivgeylr wrote

Never hire any random door knocker.

Look them up, call past clients, do some due diligence.

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chiggenNuggs t1_ivgltli wrote

Seriously. This applies to any situation where you’re on the receiving end of any direct cold calling or unexpected door-to-door or on-the-street type solicitation.

Consumer products, home services, insurance, financial products- doesn’t matter. If someone suddenly shows up and starts putting the pressure on you to spend some money, 99% of the time they’re running some kind of shady angle, even if it’s technically not illegal or an outright scam.

If you need a product or service, do some basic research first.

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Send_Your_Noods_plz t1_ivi5fyc wrote

If they were a good deal or did legit good work, they wouldnt need to be knocking on your door saying how great their business is. You'd be seeing their work or finding them yourself.

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SafetyMan35 t1_ivifwpw wrote

Had a driveway sealer come to my door and said he was doing my neighbors house and “he had some extra” and would do my driveway for $200. My driveway was tiny and I declined. 45 minutes later he comes back and says he’ll do it for $50 so I accepted. He did an Ok job. I was later talking with my neighbor and he said the guy told him the same story, except he was quoted $500 and he accepted that offer. He was pretty pissed when I told him I paid $50.

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BecomeABenefit t1_ivg57qz wrote

This applies to lawn care, gutter cleaning, landscaping, painting, etc. The other line that tells you they're scammers is "we're doing some work for your neighbor right there and...".

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garydstew t1_ivhimi1 wrote

We get these constantly in our neighborhood. Not necessarily scammers, but it's a tactic they use to make you feel more comfortable and thus, more likely to use their services.

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Browley09 OP t1_ivg7h5z wrote

Good point. I haven't come across any of those besides the lawn care guy and I have zero interest in that anyway.

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FoldedaMillionTimes t1_ivh0ndc wrote

Also roof/shingle repair, usually right after a storm. Depending on where you live, there are actually extended sort-of families that will hit a town once a year, get hold of a bunch of shitty "your job is your credit" trucks, and run several scams all over town at once. The big ones are paint (which they water down and will quickly fade), roofing related stuff, and what's listed above. Then they blow back out of town and stay gone for a year or two.

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MYOB3 t1_ivg7lwg wrote

Also, never buy the coupon book for inexpensive oil changes from the door to door sales guy, for the garage you don't use. Did it once. Tried to redeem. Hilarious. No walk ins. Only good on on certain days of the week. Must be scheduled ten business days in advance. You getting the picture? They put so many restrictions on it, the coupons were worthless.

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crochetquilt t1_iviicmx wrote

Had a guy try this once and I knew that the owner of the garage was selling it. So the owner was basically preselling work he wouldn't be responsible for actually filling, and pocketing the money for it in the process.

The garage kept the name so I bet this came as a surprise - they either had to not do the work and piss off a bunch of potential customers, or do a bunch of free work.

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AcclaimedGroundhog t1_ivgw7ul wrote

If they come to your door, they don't have enough organic business from being good. Avoid.

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crochetquilt t1_iviinnq wrote

Yeah I've got three good companies I've worked with and I call them up knowing it'll be a while before I get to see them onsite LOL.

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turandokht t1_ivitpax wrote

That’s what I came here to say too. Always ask yourself why them going door to door, literally the hardest and least efficient advertising method, is what they feel they need to do in order to drum up business.

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OLDGuy6060 t1_ivho574 wrote

On the OTHER hand, if someone is actually doing tree work on a house nearby, offering them cash to come take care of your place at 30% their normal rate seems to work really really well.
I was quoted 1600 bucks to trim two trees in the front of my house, and my neighbor had the same guy doing the same work. I slipped him 4 hundred bucks cash, and they took care of both of my trees. The truck was there, the guys were there, and the boss was not there. They each got 100 bucks to do a couple extra hours work.

Win-win.

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erishun t1_ivirrmf wrote

I wonder who pays if one of them is horribly injured in a fall. My guess is that their insurance policy won’t as it wasn’t a scheduled, signed job.

Also your homeowner’s may also refuse to payout as again, it was an “under the table” deal with non-bonded laborers (check your policy).

This seems like a good way to lose your home in my opinion.

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OLDGuy6060 t1_ivk3ox5 wrote

Yeah I will burn that bridge when I get to it.

Living in fear is NOT living.

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FFlifer t1_ivin92j wrote

This is what I came here to say! Also, username checks out!

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Bmourre1995 t1_ivhk94y wrote

The company I work for always leaves flyers in all the surrounding mail boxes and we charge significantly less than our completion and have a near perfect track record so I wouldn't say this is always the case.

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Ownza t1_ivi6aph wrote

>always leaves flyers in all the surrounding mail boxes

That's illegal unless you are paying postage. I wouldn't be putting anything in any mailbox if I were you. If someone else is doing it whatever i guess but I wouldn't fuck with postal inspectors, or the IRS.

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Pim_Jickens1811 t1_ivha8a8 wrote

I was that salesman for a lawn care company at one point until I realized that the company was a shithole. My manager always said our pitch should be some shit along the lines of “we take care of a lot of lawns in the neighborhood so I figured we could do yours at the same time as the neighbors.” Even if we did do their lawns at the same time as their neighbors, it doesn’t mean the company was good at it or trustworthy at all. I finally had enough at the beginning of Covid when my boss told us to push even harder because people were losing their jobs and didn’t want to pay for lawn care. Like no shit, if I lost my job and had lawn care, it would be one of the first expenses I’d drop.

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AKnitWit777 t1_ivhr590 wrote

I always ask for the addresses where they're working so I can talk to the neighbors to get feedback about their work before committing. 9 times out of 10 they just walk away.

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Nangia1234 t1_ivhidlz wrote

This 💯💯 it happened to us after a hurricane came through our area. Ended up paying 3x what the other companies in our area charged. They were in our town (from GA) area to “help out”.

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Nangia1234 t1_ivhihlt wrote

Sorry for grammatical mistakes. Three young kids, and this time change.

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Scottybt50 t1_ivivswd wrote

I have had the opposite experience. Had a smallish tree (4.5m) in an awkward corner of my backyard, got 3 quotes ranging from 750 - $1200 to cut down and remove. I offered to dispose of the tree myself and one guy dropped his quote by $100. Few weeks later had a flyer for garden/tree services dropped in my mailbox on my day off . Gave him a call and the guy showed up around 5pm, said he will chop it down immediately and leave for me to dispose of for $200 cash. 45 minutes later tree was gone. Took 3 trips in my ute to dump it for free at the green waste depot next day to be recycled into compost.

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geraldbowman t1_ivgnu9k wrote

Or they are already there, have familiarity with your trees, and are just as competent and honest as anyone else you could hire.

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ronan7557 t1_ivhjm30 wrote

I have a neighbor that does just this. He does tree trimming/removal and a very reasonable price. Ive priced him against others and had him do some of my trees. When he has a slow day, he will loadhis stump grinder and just drive around looking for business and then go talk to people.

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BrotherGreed t1_ivh6435 wrote

It's possible, but it just isn't likely, or at least not likely enough to be worth it for me.

Businesses knocking on your door like this are either new and trying to establish a clientele, or not very good and therefore don't receive repeat business and need to constantly find new clients.

Local, established professional businesses that do good work will likely have contracts with local businesses and generate more from word of mouth and likely don't need to go door to door coming up with lies "we were just working on your neighbor's yard over there..." and "discounts" to manipulate you.

If you wanna roll the dice and find out if it's a new guy that does quality work or a shady business that does bad work, more power to you, it's your property. I'll skip the jerking around and hire an established professional business with good reviews that I went and sought out. Just keeps things simple.

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Browley09 OP t1_ivh3gr2 wrote

In my experience and other people I know that have had a similar experience, that has never been the case. This latest experience showed me that at the very least, the door to door guy was trying to rip me off at more than twice the price.

Hiring a professional local means they are always in the area. Just about anyone else that is competent and honest, isn't going door to door.

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TheW83 t1_ivhgj7e wrote

I had a flier in my mailbox saying I could save big on a tree job because they were working in my area. They wanted $4500 for two trees. I passed. Looked up another company that was well reviewed and they said $3k.

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Gillbreather t1_ivjip5p wrote

Local is better. They have a reputation you can check up on.

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joykilled t1_ivid60z wrote

Never say never. I once had a door knocker for a tree trimmer guy. I said ok, a quote can't hurt. The guy came and gave me a cash offer of $2500 to cut down all my trees and cut them into rounds. There were 11 trees. I paid him. It took them two days and 6 guys. I think I did ok.

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Danny_Bomber t1_ivjwd7g wrote

You probably could have gotten paid for it rather than paying. My in laws in GA got a nice sum for the trees on their property.

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thatguythatdied t1_ivijygg wrote

My personal favourite was a self proclaimed arborist who kindly offered to remove the “dead” tree from the front yard for a good price as he was in the area. That was 5 years ago, and the tree is alive and well to this day. I still haven’t quite figured out his angle.

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JoeBeezy123 t1_ivja1kq wrote

As someone who does tree work for a living this is kind of an unfair generalization considering some of us actually try to do the right thing. Tree work in general is incredibly dangerous and while yes there are a lot of sketchy people who charge sketchy prices, that’s not fair to assume that all of us do. That’s on the consumer to know what the tree value is worth if they don’t know they should shop around and compare.

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Browley09 OP t1_ivjijmh wrote

The difference between someone who clearly does the work themselves and approaches the situation asking if any tree work needs to be done, and the dude that clearly doesn't have a chainsaw and starts the conversation with the sales pitch of I'll cut that tree for $$$ tomorrow when my guys are in the neighborhood.

I installed garage doors for 12 years and after 6 years of working for a company went out on my own. I know how hard it is to get started but in those 6 years I had developed some contacts and clients. Word of mouth was a powerful tool for me. I could offer cheaper prices and make more money for myself because I had less overhead. I clearly did the work myself, dressed clean and professional for a blue collar worker, was honest with pricing and scope of work, carried my proof of insurance (from a reputable company), and had a good record of solid work.

Putting on the consumer to know the value is kind of my point. If you have already gotten pricing for tree work or any other project then it's unlikely you'll be using the Dorr to door guy, but not impossible.

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JoeBeezy123 t1_ivkf6dx wrote

Okay so yes there is obviously a distinct difference in your point of view, but to a lot of us going door to door to offer a “free estimate” or “hand business cards” is the only way to market ourselves more easily. It’s the only way I have been able to market myself especially because I don’t have the resources to put an ad in a newspaper or make an commercial. The big con in the tree industry is it is not safety enforced and highly regulated like other trades and any moron can pick up a chainsaw and start cutting. That is not how I was trained at all during my 5 years as a professional tree climber. Many people do not ask enough questions or look around, which to me is absolutely absurd. Some guys undersell and some guys oversell. I personally tell everyone that if they don’t feel that the price I’m risking my life for is worth it that they can always give a call to another local Arborist so that I can give an honest and compared rate. I don’t agree with many of the obscene prices that some horrible people charge at all, but at the same time why didn’t anyone question the trimmer or call another tree company? I apologize if this is coming off as aggressive but the title and context of your statement triggers me just because of a bad experience with scammers, but I am sorry that you had to deal with that.

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keepthetips t1_ivg29r2 wrote

Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips!

Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment.

If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.

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thomasvista t1_ivg37z5 wrote

A lot of tree companies hire sketchy people in general - ex-criminals, folks that just got out of jail, etc.

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kempff t1_ivg5zmg wrote

Which is not a bad thing. Those guys need a foot up.

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Bridledbronco t1_ivgjhug wrote

And probably some of the only work they can muster. I’m sure the job ad reads “masters degree required, 10 years of sales experience”. When the convict shows up with none of that and says he will go knock doors all day in the heat for 10 bucks an hour, they say, yeah ok.

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osten205 t1_ivh0yo9 wrote

When I worked in tree work I was a “valuable employee” because I had a valid driver’s license. This is not a joke.

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TheW83 t1_ivhfxqn wrote

I was trying to trim a tree in my front yard and a guy came by and said he'd take down the tree for me for $300. I said sure and he grabbed gear from the back of his truck and climbed up and trimmed the entire thing quite well. I threw in another $50 to trim a large branch from a nearby tree. I was able to find his mugshot online. Armed robbery.

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Kidnovatex t1_ivhktzz wrote

Yup, we found our tree trimmer the same way, he came by when we were outside and offered to trim at a very reasonable price. He did a perfectly good job and we've had him come back a few times since then. I get the OP's point, but you can often find people that will do a good job even if they don't have an office and 100 employees.

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Hecking_Walnut t1_ivhwbqe wrote

When I was between jobs, I ran into a guy who was a regular at my old job. He ran his own tree trimming business and asked if I wanted to do some work with him (I assume 90% of the reason was that I had a truck, and he didn't even have a car). He was definitely kind of a sketchy dude, and the other guys he had working for him were twice as sketchy. But at the end of the day, he was super knowledgeable about what he was doing, enough to be able to competently run a crew that was usually made up of different random desperate people every few weeks. He was amazing at talking to people he'd never met and most of the work we got while I was with him was by talking to surrounding neighbors on the jobs we were doing. The most I ever saw him charge someone was $500, but that included hauling the lumber off the property. Most of the jobs he did only ran about $200-$300 for a day or two of work. We always left properties looking how they did when we got there and never half-assed a job. If I ever owned a property with trees that needed trimming, I know exactly who I'm gonna call. Sometimes the door to door guys are just as good as the professionals. Suffice to say, if you're gonna get a service like that done, always get quotes from competitors in the area, and never pay for it all up front.

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evileclipse t1_ivjixfp wrote

Please don't use that as a reason to not employ someone? What he did in the past isn't what he is today. It sounds like you were impressed and it worked out fine. I don't see how the rest is relevant

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TheW83 t1_ivjkidp wrote

I was acknowledging the previous comment in saying I had hired somebody for work that just got out of prison and he was a fine. I never got his information but I'd certainly hire him again.

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Ownza t1_ivi6ic6 wrote

> Armed robbery.

Turns out that you uno reversed him on that price. AMIRITE?

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heroatthedisco t1_ivg4hcr wrote

I like to leave them mediocre 2 star reviews.

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SheBear661 t1_ivgt644 wrote

Oh it gets worse. Pulled up to some guys in my Benz, I can fix that for you for $300! Live and learn!!

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Informal_Emu_8980 t1_ivhzm3e wrote

Sounds like you hired some amphetamine enthusiasts the first time around

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Aetheldrake t1_ividq7g wrote

Funny enough my dad got a few of his trees removed too. They were basically dead and just harboring bad insects really but also in the way of a fence which is needed to get a dog.

Eventually the people he settled on did fairly well and accidentally under charged us because they sized the trees weirdly but it was done so said lucky us.

They were NOT the "local" tree removers lol. Whoever the locals were did indeed want nearly double from what I remember him mentioning

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keestie t1_ivigmn9 wrote

You're probably right that this is sometimes the case, but I used to work for a good arborist company and we sometimes did "in the area" jobs. It was like 2% of our business, but we did do it.

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Cthulu95666 t1_iviieky wrote

“Guys that showed up were driving trucks help together by bondo and looked rough. Like just woke up from a hangover and threw on their dirty, ripped clothes from the day before.”

Homeboy trying to say Mexicans without calling them Mexicans jajajaja

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decorama t1_ivijbi2 wrote

Related: Never hire the roofer "in the area" after a hail storm. They will even get a phone number to match your area code just to appear local.

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Arisia118 t1_ivjclwf wrote

Always, always, always make sure they have insurance. If a tree trimmer doesn't have insurance and falls off a ladder in your yard, and has no workers comp insurance, you will get sued.

And those door to door people pretty much never have insurance. Stick with the arborist, even if they're expensive.

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Addakisson t1_ivjd86s wrote

My sister fell for this. Told the guy she wanted only the dead branches removed. He said he understood, he was a professional. She worked nights so trusted the guy while she slept. He not only removed the dead branches, he also removed large mature thriving limbs. Limbs that would NEVER grow back. Her lush full trees were cannibalized. When she complained that she asked for the dead branches to be removed not the thriving limbs he basically blew her off and left in a huff, leaving tons of debris in her yard.

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Browley09 OP t1_ivjh29t wrote

Yeah that sucks. Finding a good tree guy isn't always easy. I learned the hard (if not obvious in hindsight) way to look for someone myself not do the impulse thing and take the "great" deal. Sorry that happened to her, having healthy old growth trees is a real joy for me.

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Addakisson t1_ivjiobp wrote

For her too, the healthy mature trees were one the of the reasons she bought this house. Two years later and she's still upset. It didn't help that the tree he decimated the worst was a tree they planted 30 years ago, when their son was born. I had to have ever tree in my backyard cut down due to disease and I was upset but my sister's backyard, that is her sanctuary. Hard lesson learned.

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olrustnut t1_ivi8rnp wrote

If you need tree work done always make sure the arborist is ISA (International Society of Aboriculture) certified.

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