Never buy anything at your door or on the street

I have a simple rule: I never buy anything from anyone at my front door or on the street! Period. That hard-line approach stops most door-to-door and street sales situations.

But by their very nature, door-to-door conmen are extremely persistent, even aggressive while flogging their goods or services. Most Canadians are too polite to simply turn away these salespeople. So you can stop most in their tracks by just asking for a business licence since many municipalities require a licence to sell door-to-door. Legitimate salespeople with real products or services should always be able to produce the necessary identification and licence to back up their presentation.

Never let them intimidate you! Fraud artists perpetrating a door-to-door scam are forceful and try to talk residents into paying with cash or with a cheque up front. They will also often threaten the resident with legal action or threaten to tear up the property if the person doesn't pay.

In one case, the contractor didn't quote an amount to the senior homeowner for cutting up two trees that had come down during a windstorm. But when the job was finished, they'd left a mess of branches and chips strewn across the yard and handed the woman a bill for $14,000. She refused to pay until they threatened her with a lawsuit.

She gave them a cheque, but quickly called relatives who brought in the police. The perpetrators were arrested before they could even cash the cheque.

This is not always the case however.  In many situations, Canadian victims of a scam are too embarrassed to admit they were swindled, so the crime is never even reported.

Common Door-to-Door and Street Sales Scam Tactics

Tree trimming: The scammer breaks a branch off of a tree in someone's yard and then brings the broken branch to convince the resident they need their branches trimmed immediately.

Chimney cleaning: Another trick is to tell the resident they need to have their chimney cleaned yearly, and then just spread some soot around to make it look like the chimney was cleaned.

Driveway paving: Getting your attention with an unusually low quote, scammers will often use cheap or inappropriate materials if they do any work at all. For example, the salesperson promises to resurface the driveway for $900, which sounds great compared to other quotes more than $2000 for the same thing. But the scammer actually just spreads used motor oil over the driveway to give it a dark look, rather than resurface it.

Affinity Approach: Scammer use the city tax roll to get names of several neighbourhood residents and then go to other houses to tell residents about the great work done for their neighbours. It appears to be a recommendation despite the fact the satisfaction is being reported by the contractor, not the actual neighbour.

White Van Speaker Scam: Three guys in a non-descript van or minivan pull up to your on the street, in a mall or at any parking lot. They claim to be home theatre installers who "happen" to have an extra theater system (or high-end speakers) in the van worth several thousand dollars. They even pull out an ‘audio' magazine with a full-page ad proving its value. They are looking for $1,000 plus $20 bucks for beer. If you decline, the price drops quickly to whatever you are willing to pay. Turns out the system in the home theatre box is a knock-off worth less than $100 if it works at all. This white van speaker scam has been around in Canada and the United States for decades and is well documented on the Internet. To fight back never buy anything from street hustlers; if it was such a good deal, they would be selling the items legitimately.