How do you react to pushy salespeople?
By Fleur
@Fleura (30776)
United Kingdom
January 23, 2025 3:24am CST
A post by @kaylachan inspired this.
How do you respond when people keep trying to sell you something?
Pushy salespeople are a personal bugbear. If I want something I will get it. If I say no then that’s that, thank you.
Thankfully pushy salespeople seem far less common here than I found they were when I lived in the USA. One time I remember I called a company to get a quote for insurance. The person gave me a price and I said I would think it over and get back to them. They said I couldn’t do that because a different person might take the call. I asked if I could ask for them by name but they said no, I had to accept the price now. If I called later it wouldn’t be valid any longer so I needed to go ahead right away. I said never mind I would take the chance on a slightly different price but they kept insisting that I should accept their quote immediately (I understood later that they must be working on commission).
Anyway the conversation went back and forth like this for a minute or two, with me getting more and more annoyed. Eventually the salesperson asked me why I wouldn’t agree to buy and I told them that I hated being pushed into anything and by this point I had definitely decided to go elsewhere, I didn’t care if it cost twice as much!
That shut them up and we ended the call. I later got a good price from another provider.
I had a completely different experience when we moved to our current house. We decided we wanted solar panels (funnily enough, given Kayla’s post!) and found some suppliers to install some. One person who came out to give us a quote was an engineer and the very antithesis of a pushy salesperson. He looked at the roof, took various measurements, and suggested a layout.
When I asked if we could add extra panels on the other bit of roof he said ‘Oh yes that would work’ and added those. He had detailed answers to all our questions and was just very obliging and lovely.
Some of the other people who came out to quote were less knowledgeable and more pushy. We went with the nice man (Roxon Electrical of Gloucester, in case anyone in south-west England is reading this) and they did a good job. We recommended them to friends and they used the same company to put panels on their house, and when they moved they had them back to do their new house. So not being pushy worked out well for them!
And no that's not our house in the picture.
All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2025.
5 people like this
5 responses
@Rimps85 (2089)
• India
11h
@Melanie_Marie here also, its mostly insurance company or bank cards or internet service provider...
4 people like this
@Fleura (30776)
• United Kingdom
10h
@Melanie_Marie Very true. If I don't hear a real person's voice immediately then I put the phone down.
2 people like this
@DaddyEvil (139243)
• United States
9h
Yup! If it sounds like a machine called me or a salesperson, I just hang up and tell my cellphone to block any further calls from that number.
1 person likes this
@xFiacre (13201)
• Ireland
8h
@fleura Pushy salespersons soon learn that it won’t wash with me. I’ve even been known to start singing at them operatic style to express my refusal to buy and that embarrasses them even if no-one is around watching. I’m sure I’m on quite a few black lists.
2 people like this
@BarBaraPrz (48133)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
6h
Darn! I was gonna compliment you on having a nice house 
I hate pushy salespeople, too, doesn't everyone?
I hate pushy salespeople, too, doesn't everyone?1 person likes this
@BarBaraPrz (48133)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
6h
@Fleura Of course yours is nicer: it's yours!
1 person likes this
@DaddyEvil (139243)
• United States
9h
After the first time I tell a pushy salesperson "no", I would have simply hung up the phone. If someone gets insistent with me, I'm more likely to ignore them.
Several years ago, Pretty and I needed a new washer/dryer so we went to a local store to look at what they had on hand. We found the housewares department and started looking at the different models and seeing what each type could do. We weren't interested in the most expensive stuff they had, we wanted something in our price range. A saleslady came out of a back office and insisted on showing us the most expensive washer/dryer setup they had. We looked for a minute, checked the price and went back to the area/devices we had already been looking at before she approached us. I tried to ask her a question about the mid-priced machines we were looking at and she ignored us... I called the washer/dryer repair person we had hired previously to fix both machines we already owned and asked him if the pair we were looking at were as good as the ones he had previously repaired for us. He assured me that the model was comparable.
We went to the front of the building and told a cashier what machines we wanted. He called that lady up front to wait on us. I told the cashier we weren't buying anything from her and explained why we didn't want her to ring us up. He called the store manager and asked me to explain what happened with the salesperson, so I did... The store manager told the cashier to ring me up for the devices we wanted and to give us free delivery to our home. He took the saleslady with him, talking non-stop as they wandered away from us.
The cashier laughed quietly and said the saleslady was on commission and she'd just lost the commission she could have had if she'd helped us instead of trying to get us to buy something we didn't want. We quietly laughed with him and bought the washer/dryer we'd picked out.1 person likes this
@DaddyEvil (139243)
• United States
8h
@Fleura In the jobs I had, I was paid a wage and then could earn commission on top of that.
If a salesperson isn't attentive, they get fired!
1 person likes this
