Stick Your Gutter...

One of the many joys of the recent rain in St.Louis is that it makes the gutter over my garage overflow. This is on account of it a) being fitted by a certified twat who didn't make sure it angled correctly, and b) being full of tree bark, leaves, dead birds and other assorted shit that shouldn't be in a gutter. Yes we did fit gutter guards but they are basically almost useless - I don't know how a small branch can squeeze through the mesh but apparently it's not that difficult. Mature, house-proud suburbanites would have done something about this by now but we've only been in the house ten years so it's a bit soon for us to try anything radical like fixing the fucking thing.

Anyway, I was out there holding a ladder so Mrs.Bison could pull a dead walrus out of the downspout on Sunday. Once I left to go to the gym some sales guy for a gutter company (let's call them Gutter Moron) walked up and offered a free quote to Mrs.Bison for his "wonderful" product. Fair enough. So today he showed up while I was at work to persuade Mrs.Bison to purchase new gutter guards (for the entire house) that are guaranteed not to clog. The first sign should have been the salesman's name - it was something stupid like Bud Clunge - and she should have thrown him out simply for that.

But she sat through his presentation, all about how his product was the best thing since oxygen while every product made by anyone else in the world would make your hair turn green and give you cancer of the ringpiece, or something like that. He had the contract filled out and everything, and she eventually asked "How much then?" Turns out that he could immediately give a 33% discount because there had been a coupon in the paper a few weeks ago, meaning the price was only $5,100. Now I don't know about you but for $5,100 I would expect a gutter to do a bit more than just not clog up. I would expect it to make me a cup of tea, whiten my teeth and enlarge my penis, at a minimum. Mrs.Bison obviously thought so too because the look she gave Mr.Clunge clearly communicated an absence of buying signals. She told him there was no way she was making a decision to buy gutters right there.

So now Mr.Clunge starts the whole charade of calling his boss and "persuading" him to allow a bigger discount. This gets another $600 off. Still no reaction from Mrs.B, who repeats that she's not buying his gutters. Back on the phone with the boss again (or the speaking clock or dial-a-wank or whoever it is that shit salesmen actually call when they are pretending to be working over the boss for a discount). Another $300 discount but still no purchase from Mrs.Bison. You see - I like this woman for a reason: I can go out and know that she's not going to be taken for a ride by any dumb fuck salesman. When Mr.Clunge asked for only a 50% deposit she laughed and told him that no way was she writing him a two grand check for gutter guards!

What amazes me is that anyone is such a colossal wanker that they would try and sell using such a half-arsed bullshit process. If he'd told her about the product, given a quote and then left, we would at least have considered them. Such an approach would have given extra credibility to the company - after all, if you've got a good product you don't need to cut the price three times in five minutes. But now he's fucked it up permanently and there's no way he's making a sale.

If it had been me I'd have simply told him to stick his gutters up his arse and fuck off, but Mrs.Bison is a nicer human being. On the other hand she could have saved him a lot of time if she'd simply pointed out that we couldn't use his product because it wasn't designed to stop a walrus getting in your downspout. And without that it's no use to us...


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison