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Colorado Prime deceptive ripoff bait and switch sales tactics Farmingdale New York
My wife and I received a call from Colorado Prime. They had received our name from one of our friends so we agreed to meet with the sales rep. They said the whole presentation would only take an hour. Conveniently they came out on a Saturday. It lasted three hours.
We listened to his sales pitch. It sounded good and seemed based in fact. The food looked appealing and the service looked very nice. Then he hit us with having to buy a freezer from him. Our old refridgerator was nearly twenty years old, so we agreed to this for $1000.
This was supposed to be a frost free commercial unit. (Its frost free when you open the door and manually defrost it.) We also purchased the 3 year warranty for $400. I did not mind that, because if we dropped the service later, we would still own the freezer and the warranty would be throught Wirlpool (I was wrong on that one, the service is through Colorado Prime).
I agreed to the 19% finance fee because I knew that I would pay off the freezer right away and I viewed the credit line just like a department store line of credit. 30 days no payments. Later we found out that the food we agreed to purchase fell under the same finance fee. (I was wrong on that one too).
Our representative worked with us to put together a menu plan to suit our family's needs. For the 4 of us, my wife, myself, my 3 year old and my 6 year old. So that we could not figure out our actual food bill, the representative threw what he called the loss leaders. He stated that they were simply a pass through on cost. These consisted of cleansers and paper towels among other things. 3 months goes by.
When we had a follow up visit from another rep, my wife and I were determined to pin down the representative and get a cost per pound or cost per item. The first time the rep. did his math, our price for a pound of bacon came to $10 a pound. There was not much savings there. He quickly changed the multiplier and the cost went down to $1 a pound. He could not show us how he came to that number.
Like a complete idiot, I allowed him to sell me some new pots and pans, and a new grill. We had been looking at new grills, so I went along. (The items were very nice, but further research showed that we were overcharged by up to 60% above market prices.) We went along with this because our total bill was to stay at $208 a month.
Because we were good customers and their funny accounting they could extend us additional discounts off the list prices. We were now going to get 60% off instead of 20%. We still not did not know how much the list price was.
The first rep had figure our monthly bill to be $208. The new $208 was to include, our food bill, appliance bill and interest payments. I was ok with this. I enjoyed the grill, a Ducane, and the pots were of good quality. Things were great, until I got the next bill.
My cost had gone from $208 a month to $328. If I did not pay off the balance (which was now $6024), a 21% finance fee would be applied to the next bill on my revolving charge account.
When I called the customer service group, they could not help me. I called my sales rep, he would not call me back. I called his manager, she has not called me back. I have left message after message for these people. No call.
Unfortunately, the only checking I did on this company was the Better Business Bureau. The report stated that they had satisfied all complaints that had been brought against them. I figured that no company that had been around for any amount of time would have a 100% satisfaction rate. They had made good on complaints.
I am an idiot. I am in sales. I work on the premise that there is no such thing as a successful dishonest saleperson. I was duped. Hopefully my rant will help someone else.
Joseph
Lake Forest, California
U.S.A.
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