Solicitors...

[Smoke]

If I'm not expecting someone, I'll talk to them >through< the door. I just stand to the side and ask "who's there? What can I do for you?" I can also see who's there through the sidelights without opening the door. Increasingly, people have Ring (or similar) doorbell cameras to achieve the same effect.

It's really hard to give your sales pitch to a closed door.

We've been here for just over 3 months and we haven't had anybody knocking on our but Walmart/Amazon.

As I've said numerous times when we lived in the apartment we used the Ring doorbell to answer the front door.

When the doorbell rang, unless it was somebody that we knew, we'd answer through the speaker and as soon as they started the sales pitch we said "Not Interested thanks. Have a nice day." and turned off the speaker.

At that point what are they going to do? Keep knocking?

 

[Doug M.]

Most people are not smart enough to do various things for revenge.

1) One cannot get to my door unless they call first and we expect them (6' fence with padlocked gate and posted "no trespassing"); other than people coming to the house to do work (like our troubled internet connection the last few days ), there are not many with our phone numbers. That precludes a lot of trouble.

2) If you don't have that system in place (it also protects our dogs from being let out by some idiot, or with some of the dogs, a pretty bad bite which is immunized by their criminal conduct), one still should NEVER open the door to address the person outside. Yell through it. If you have big enough dogs, the offender (remember, posted) will be hard to hear. And if you don't have a gun in hand at that time, you need to have a conversation with R. Lee Ermey as Gunny Hartman.

3) I would bet a lot that most of you would be better served by adopting my protocols. If you have immediate family, probably especially grandkids living close enough to just walk over, it will not work. We don't have any within 2000 miles, and the only time we see kids is at the school bus stops or a couple houses on the dog walk routes, because Rosie is a people hound and attracts attention, making her very popular. The actual number of people who would not annoy me by showing up is less than 10, and probably less than five.

 

[Yaworski]

3) I would bet a lot that most of you would be better served by adopting my protocols.

I have a ten foot high fence with razor wire on top. The yard is patrolled by alligators.

 

[Doug M.]

I happen to prefer my land sharks. If I could have a 10 foot fence with concertina roll, I would. Darned zoning.

 

[dockmurgw]

3) I would bet a lot that most of you would be better served by adopting my protocols.

Definitely...I never want to repeat a mistake I made about 5 years ago. About 1 AM I was jolted out of bed by loud knocking on the door...I made the mistake of opening it. It was 10 below in January, icy roads, and a kid slid off the road on the way home from his night job. He had the audacity to enter my unprotected home and steal my heat! Never again, after reading all the expert advice in this thread from all the humanitarian of the year award winners I'm getting butt ugly chain link, vicious Dobermans, ring cameras and foyer guns. The proper course of action would have been to tell him to go away with my ring camera speaker so he could crawl off and die of frost bite, I'll never make that mistake again!

 

[Doug M.]

When I was trucking, I violated my pretty hard rule about stopping for people a couple of times. One was a guy who slid off the road in rural Maine, and would have been in deep trouble had I not. I dropped him a truck stop. One was a young lady whose car died a violent death just after a rest area on the NY Thruway; she had a big Cabelas bag of stuff for a college (U Mass Amherst) geology trip to the Arctic. I took her to Springfield MA and dropped here there so she could call a friend for a ride to campus. Another was a single mom whose car died on I70 in Ohio; OHP monitors channel 9 and I called them and told them I was going drop here and the kid at the driveway of the nearest post. These were all before cell phones. Circumstances can dictate tactics.

Most of the time, you are better off to do things similar to what I do. I live near a campus and the biggest concern I have is some drunk kid trying to get into the house for a stupid reason.

 

[Kinman]

My dad was a door to door salesman for most of his working life, in his later life he had his own chemical company and sold his own line of janitorial supplies, small time. He was the Watkins product distributor for the Ogden, Utah area. He primarily ran a store to supply all of his salesmen but he still got out ever day to make his goal of $50 a day, that was in the 60's. My sophomore year I decided I would give door to door sales a shot, after all the old man made it look easy....NOT. He took me out of one of his routes the first day to show me the ropes. I walked up to the door and saw "NO SALESMEN" on the door. I backed off and came back down the stairs. Dad said what happened, you didn't even knock on the door. I told him about the sign, my dad said, "That sign was put up by the old man, he knows his old lady can't day no to a good salesman." "Whats the worst thing the guy could do?" Dad was a tough little guy, at 5'9" I've seen him humble bigger guys. I went back up the stairs and hit the button, the guy came to the door and said "Can't you Read?" I said "Yessir but I've got a free sample I'd like to give you." Gave him one of our free samples and a catalog. I did not last too long as a door to door salesman, about as long as I lasted as a Christian Missionary in Utah.

 

[desi2358]

Don't much care for solicitors but I usually try to be polite when telling them no, go away. Not getting any to the front door this year as the front porch deck is ripped up with construction tape and signs out. Actually, it has been for a while, only had limited time to work on it and now that it's cold won't be finished till spring. Never get very many out here anyway and the only person to make it around to the back door was a young man running for trustee who I knew from my time on the volunteer fire dept.

As to people on the road as some have talked about, things are different than when I was younger. I've picked up people more than once in the past, usually because I was sure by what I could see that they genuinely needed help. Changed a couple tires for elderly folks and women on their own. Drove a young woman and her child into town after they slid off the road into a ditch in a snowstorm. Not up to tire changes anymore but would still try to help someone if I felt they really needed it. With the proliferation of cell phones most broken down cars are only a phone call away from help and I would have to have a good reason to get involved. Accidents? If I'm the first there I'm going to stop. Too many years as a volunteer fireman to just pass by. Hitchhikers are another matter, too many questionable people wandering around nowadays. In some cases they might get a call to the non-emergency number of the local Sheriff to ask if someone could check them out.

 

[jeffrefrig]

If they're cute, I'll talk to them...for 3 minutes max. My dog has a really vicious bark, but she's a baby doll if I would happen to let someone in I'm expecting. She definitely hates the Medusa-looking haircuts many locals wear!
"No soliciting" means nothing. 4 syllable words are usually useless, unless there are two people that can figure it out together; by which time Angel is trying to jump through the storm door anyways. I actually put a fairly large sign (2' X 2') that said "Don't be coming to my door!!!" That worked, but it was kinda low-life looking! Barking dog is best.

 

[Kinman]

One of my nephews went to work for the USPS, he was required to make an attempt to deliver the mail. He always used caution whenever needing to go through a fenced yard, he had access to military grade stuff in the event of a dog attacking and from that point forward they were issued a warning and needed to put their mailbox on the outside of the fence. He told me he also carried a bag of doggie treats which go a lot further making friends than a squirt in the face. I had a friend that had a beautifully trained huge Doberman Pincer guard dog in his electronics warehouse. He would let you break in, he just wouldn't let you leave. The alarms would go off, the cops would show up usually before my buddy and find a thief sitting on the floor with this huge Doberman sitting with him. If you tried to leave he would grab your arm or leg with enough force the harder you tried to leave the harder he bit down. He also never barked, one of the most wonderfully trained dogs I ever saw.