gutter fucks

So the gutter people came yesterday.

To cut to the chase, they wanted over $5000--for just the gutters. Not even the covered kind, as those were over 7 grand.

Five Grand for gutters-- are you fucking KIDDING me???

Little did I know when I agreed to have these people come to my house that I was in for the 'new car experience'. New car experiences piss me off. I really don't think that I can express exactly how much I loathe the whole "haggle and dicker" aspect of the process. And I wasn't anticipating it, which pisses me off even more.

The company I called evidently is the equivalent of the BMW 's of the gutter world. I wish I would have known that going in, and then I could have cancelled the whole thing. But no, I blythely stepped right in it.

The first thing that pissed me off is that I told them that I had somewhere to be at 7:30 pm. No problem, the whole thing would be done by 6:30 they assured me. But their fucking sales pitch just kept going and going and going.... I didn't manage to get them out of my house until 7:40-- very uncool of them and it made me late for band rehearsal. They also pulled the whole "let me show you why we're better than the other guys thing. That should have been a tipoff right there... that and the delay in getting to the quoted price.

Then I had to sit though the whole 'let me see what we can do for you' thing. And here is where I wish I could be a mean person. I should have just said- unless you can get your price down to 2 grand and throw in a blowjob, we aint' got a deal. But no- I'm a nice guy (and they were ugly) so I let them do the 'call the manager' thing.

Just like a fucking car dealership.

Then its the whole, well, if we can put a sign in your yard and put you on our referral list, then we can lower it to... thing. After three iteratiions of this, and it getting down to 4+ grand, I finally grew a pair and said, "Look. I am NOT prepared to sign anything today. I don't care if the price goes up because I'm not taking advantage of the 'day of demo' thing. I am not going to pull the trigger on this deal because quite frankly your price is still 2 grand over what I was anticipating and i have to completely reexamine my finances."

To their credit they still tried to work me by saying, "This is a really good deal. I realize its a lot and you want to think about it, but if you don't take it today, with the price increase we are never going to hear from you again, are we?"

And so I stood up, looked the sales dude in the eye and said, "Then I guess this is goodbye." And shook his hand.

Then the fucking manager called my cell phone one last time. And then i had to get snippy.

"Look. I really appreciate all you tried to do to work on the cost for me. But your price is just too freakin' high. I can't swing it and I'm unwilling to shell out that much money. It just isn't gonna happen. Thank you and goodbye."

Nothing pisses me off more than the 'hard sell'. I'm amazed I kept my cool as long as I did.