This kind of salesmanship sliding into fraud is getting more common in the US.
ADT (the big home security company) had someone come to my house that I recently bought. He insisted he was not a salesman. He pretended that the house had previously been using their services (but didn't out right say it). He asked if the escrow office informed me, and said that their system was 'already set up'.
Of course, it wasn't. It was a ploy but a confusing, sinister one.
It's troubling that such a large company can get away with this legally.
It's also not surprising that the merchants of fear (selling security) are employing such tactics.
The UK has this situation where Tories insisted on privatising the utilities even though they are a natural monopoly. So the actual delivery (of gas or electricity) was given to a company to do but then "supply" to customers is on paper something customers can switch, even though obviously the actual gas or electricity delivered to your home can't be switched because that would be horribly impractical.
The idea was people can choose a better "supplier" - maybe it's a famous brand or they liked the TV advert or it just offers better prices. These days a lot of them offer "100% Green electricity". You're getting the same electricity as ever, but they've got a spreadsheet which shows they bought the requisite amount of "credits" for solar or wind or whatever not coal. Not quite pointless, but maybe about the same practical impact as signing a petition. Anyway of course it turns out consumers don't like change (this is the Conservative party, you'd think they might know a thing or two about that) and so most people stuck with the "incumbent" they were assigned based on where they lived even if it had worse customer service and higher prices.
But just keeping 80+% of the market wasn't enough. Incumbent suppliers wanted 100% of "their" market, so for way too long (until businesses actually got fined real money for this after being caught on camera too often) they'd do stuff like a sales guy is given a badge which says "District manager" or something, not "Sales" - and dressed up like an actual maintenance guy and he shows up at homes that have switched to a different supplier. He's all apologetic, "Sorry to bother you," but he just needs you to sign some paperwork because of a "problem". Maybe he looks at a meter, pretends to examine the cables or pipework... He doesn't mention that he's a sales person and the "problem" is that you're paying less money to somebody else for the same product. You sign, "All done, you won't have any more problems" and you only find out when the bill arrives from an unfamiliar supplier what sort of "problem" it was you were having.
Of course if you spent a few minutes reading the paperwork it says what you're signing, so it won't fool the average HN reader, but "Technically not scamming most smart people" isn't the standard we ought to be setting for anybody, much less essential utilities.
Large businesses which rely on direct sales to consumers frequently set sales quotas so high that salespeople are effectively forced to cheat or even break the law. When caught, the executives have plausible deniability because they never explicitly ordered anyone to act unethically. It was all just implied.
ADT (the big home security company) had someone come to my house that I recently bought. He insisted he was not a salesman. He pretended that the house had previously been using their services (but didn't out right say it). He asked if the escrow office informed me, and said that their system was 'already set up'.
Of course, it wasn't. It was a ploy but a confusing, sinister one.
It's troubling that such a large company can get away with this legally.
It's also not surprising that the merchants of fear (selling security) are employing such tactics.