GTA councillors want to get home service salespeople off your doorstep

By Irene Preklet and News staff

We’ve all been there. You just sit down to dinner and there is a knock on the door. When you answer, it often is a door-to-door salesperson trying to convince you that your furnace needs inspecting, or that you need some other kind of home service. And some of them won’t take no for an answer.

Two GTA councillors, one from Mississauga and another from Markham, are urging the province to put a halt to such sales.

The ‘StopTheKnocks’ campaign by Mississauga Coun. Karen Ras and Markham Coun. Colin Campbell calls for a provincial ban of door-to-door sales in the home service sector, such as furnaces and water filtration systems.

Ras said some sellers “put pressure on unsuspecting residents and consumers [who] get taken for a ride.” Like other homeowners, she also had to deal with a pushy salesperson in the past.

“Somebody came virtually into my house, with my children there, and said they were from the Ontario Energy Board, and which I knew wasn’t the case. And they were saying ‘we can save you energy, we can save you money, we need to make sure that everything is in good working order,'” Ras told 680 NEWS.

Campbell said the campaign is about protecting people and goes beyond what they can do locally.

“The province has to enact it because we don’t want something just for Markham. I want it for Hamilton, I want it for Kenora, I want it for Ottawa, Kingston, to protect everybody. That’s what the whole idea about this is for,” Campbell told 680 NEWS.

Coun. Sam Merulla from Hamilton, who also supports the campaign, said he wants to see city staff look at the feasibility of banning certain categories of door-to-door solicitation in his city.

“Having the province to do the right thing and provide us with the necessary tools to implement this type of strategy,” Merulla told 680 NEWS.

Ras, Mississauga’s councillor, is introducing a motion at the next council meeting on April 27, while Campbell will put forward a similar motion the following week.

The motion will also seek to inform residents about the dangers of buying from door-to-door sellers. At times, their tactics can vary, from pretending to be from a government agency to telling a homeowner they need to inspect their furnace.

The councillors also want other municipalities to join their cause and also encourages residents to sign a petition launched by homeowner Isaac Rudik.

Recently, the province banned door-to-door sales for electricity and natural gas contracts via the Strengthening Consumer Protection and Electricity System Oversight Act, 2015. But, the councillors want better legislation to protect homeowners from door-to-door sellers.

Rudik said when he and his partner Stacie Sommer moved into their home in the spring, someone claiming to be from Enbridge inspected their equipment and told them it had to be upgraded, which they did the next week.

“They even went so far as to impersonate me when speaking with our original provider, and did it after the 20-day cooling off period so that we would be stuck,” Sommer said in a release.

“The province’s legislation doesn’t work – they need to create a ban and stop this nonsense once and for all,” Rudik added.

According to Campbell and Ras, one company has been recently charged with 142 breaches of the Consumer Protection Act.

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