Complaint Review: Rainsoft Water and Home Depot11055 - Houston Texas

This operation calls itself 'Quality Home Products of Houston'. They sell Rainsoft water purification systems and generators via telemarketing. They are somehow hooked up with Home Depot in an unholy alliance. As a telemarketer you are told to call people and say you are with "Home Depot Home Services and Quality Air". You are only given leads for people who have purchased a home recently, whether it's new or pre-owned. The first thing you will notice working there is that the place has a screwed up and ineffective marketing system and only certain people get the good leads. You call to congratulate the homeowner and launch into how Home Depot has reserved 'housewarming gifts' for them: a $20 certificate to use at either Home Depot, or a steakhouse or Target.

Then you tell them their next gift is a free water test, no strings attached. How a portable lab brought to their home by a certified Home Depot Tech will be used to show their water quality, no strings attached. Well, strings are attached. If you don't buy their $9,000 overpriced system they don't even leave the gift certificates! And, they are not even certificates.....they are mail in cards that take up to six weeks to be processed until you receive the $20 certificate if you ever do receive it. But you tell them over the phone that they will be left the CERTIFICATE FOR THE GIFT THAT NIGHT. Baloney. If you say no to the whole deal of the water test, they say adios and you never see the 'housewarming gifts' period. Silly bait and switch scam to get in your house!

The really bad scam is the 'free washer and dryer' drawing box at Home Depot that some people have been stupid enough to drop a ballot into. This group of leads is the choice fertile kind because these people have already volunteered to be duped. They in most cases checked a box on this ballot that indicates their water smells or tastes bad! Wide open door and a lay-down lead to get an appointment, which the choice few telemarketers do with great frequency. The rest of us are calling the same numbers over and over every night until the people put up call reject on their number or answer and tell us to drop dead. Imagine seeing Quality Water on your caller ID 10 times a night for the next three months!

The deceptive part is that the washer-dryer drawing is NEVER HELD. There are NO FINALISTS. By the time these telemarketers call the people the ballot is already usually four months old, and they are told the drawing will be held a month later. That's the red flag....who waits six months to hold a drawing? Anyway they smoothly lie and say 'Oh you are a FINALIST in the drawing and we are calling to congratulate you and give you the $20 gift certificate ad nauseum. Guess what? It's a ruse to get in the door and do the infamous water test and sell the Rainsoft equipment at the outrageous price of $9,000. Where Home Depot comes in is that the people are allowed to finance this system on their Home Depot credit card if they have one. Ergo some finance funds for the Depot. O f course, if the customer doesn't agree to the appointment, their ballot is cast into the circular file....the trash! And if they do buy, same thing because they were never real ballots to begin with. Just bait to lure the unwary.

This is deceptive trade practice pure and simple.

The workplace is unprofessional. I suffered hearing about the DUIs and drunken adventures of these people I had to work with. I was given lame, overworked leads that had been called 100 times that were taken from the public courthouse records of all people who purchased a home recently, by district. Problem is, the leads were very scanty and passed out and recycled nightly as if they were gold. So I was calling the same numbers over and over. Sometimes someone would answer; mostly no. It was very long odds to get a sale unless you had the choice washer-dryer drawing leads, which I never got.

The job pays minumum wage. It is 28 hours a week. There are no spiffs for set, confirmed appointments, only bonuses for sales, and you had to have quite a few for it to amount to a hill of beans. And HOW exactly, with these lousy, worn out leads can you make many sales? One woman had been there 2 months, set numerous appointments (for some reason they gave her the highly coveted washer-dryer ballots) but had only SIX SALES in a two month period.

Bad place to work. You are dealing with reps who come and go like the wind and they give the good reps the appointments from the choice people working the washer-dryer ballots. The crappy reps get everything else.

If your head is spinning from this, imagine mine after two weeks of hearing these liars fast talk people over the phone while I sat calling the same 50 numbers over and over. When I asked the portly and overly gregarious 'sales manager' (liar) for better leads he gave me the runaround. My first check was short and I had to harass him to get the rest of the money.

Bad company. Good product but vastly overpriced. Sleazy techniques to get in your shorts pocket. Don't work there. If you have brains you'll see through it and realize you are working few hours for minimum wage with a long shot at making any real money from sales! The 'sales manager' told me during the interview that I would make ALOTTA MONEY there. I have found that when someone tells you this, expect the opposite. It never fails.

PS...the generators are sold via the same sleazy Home Depot WIN A GENERATOR scam PLUS the poor suckers who open their doors will get the water test and be pitched to buy the Rainsoft system. Double whammy!

It is so sad that these types of jobs are proliferating and the poor folks who are extremely talented in customer service and/or sales have little to chose from in this disastrous economic climate. And the employers prey on this. MINIMUM WAGE????????? No spiffs for set, confirmed appointments? And worst of all, so few leads that I swear I have never seen anything like it!