I don’t know about you, but I really hate getting disturbed at home. I’m talking about those door-to-door sales people or the cold-callers trying to sell you crap.
We’ve signed up to a couple of privacy databases and now we never get nuisance phone calls. We’ve also got one of those stickers on the door that says, “No door-to-door sales”. It works equally well and we now only get the odd charity clothing collection, Betterware person or meter reader arriving at the front door.
Tonight though, about 10 minutes after I arrived home, a lady called at the door. “Don’t worry”, she said, “I’m not trying to sell you anything”. She then went on to tell me all about a charity and how, if I signed up today to give a certain amount per month, I could make a real difference.
Now, you may judge me here but I don’t like it when charities do this. To walk up to someones’ house, knock on the door and say, “Give me your Direct Debit information please” is a little weird at the best of times, but when the lady is about to write down the information on a post-it note it suddenly rings alarm bells in my head. “Just give me the debit card details and we’ll send you a letter in a couple of weeks”. Will you? Really? All I’ve got to go on is one badly creased leaflet that’s been laminated and an ID card that could’ve been printed out on any home printer.
So no, sorry, I’m not giving some random woman my bank information. She could be anyone. I’ll go onto the charity website and donate when I’ve got a bit more information about what they do, where their based and whether it’s a legit. I’d prefer to do it direct than through people knocking on doors or walking around the local shopping centre myself.