I was approached at home one day by a door-to-door sales person selling an energy contract. His rates sounded reasonable, so I asked him if he could give me a firm quote based on our home and general energy usage.

He told me that he would be more than happy to give me a quote, but to get it, I would have to sign some paperwork authorizing him to look into how much we could save by moving to his service.

I noticed that the paperwork he gave me to sign had the word “contract” written in big, bold letters across the top of it. I asked him point blank if what I was signing was a contract, and he immediately assured me that it was not.

I wanted to make absolutely certain that what I was signing was just an authorization to get a quote, so I asked him again in a different way, along the lines of: “So by signing this, I will in no way be locked into any kind of agreement to buy energy from you at a specified priced over a set period of time. You are NOT locking me in to ANYTHING. Correct?”

Once again, he assured me that this was not a contract, and I would not be locked into anything in any way.

In order to process my quote, we had to call his head office to confirm a few details. In the course of our conversation, I asked the head office agent if the paper I was signing was a contract. She replied that yes, it certainly was, and by signing it, I would be locking myself in for three years at a fixed rate.

I couldn’t believe the blatant lie the door-to-door sales rep had told me. After thanking the head office agent, I hung up and happily kicked him out the door. Thank goodness not everyone in his organization was as deceitful as him.