Hard Sell

Being a door-to-door salesman is one of the most challenging jobs you can find. Sometimes you need to gently prod potential customers in order to reach your sales quota, and sometimes that gentle prodding takes the form of threatening to crush the potential customer's head like a grape.

A cold-calling salesman threatened to fine - and even kill - vulnerable pensioners if they didn't buy new windows.

The bogus 'businessman' told Paul Shipman, 68, he would put his head in a vice and watch him 'bleed to death' because he wouldn't buy double glazing from his firm.

[...]

Yesterday Leicestershire trading standards confirmed the salesman is a conman who is deliberately targeting elderly people.

[...]

Mr Shipman, a retired engineer from south Leicestershire, was contacted by the man on January 25.

'He threatened to put my head in a vice and watch me bleed to death,' he told MailOnline yesterday.

Fake threats: The cold-caller told one woman she would be fined unless she bought double-glazing.

'In the end, he said he'd come round and kill me. I was concerned about other people being targeted and called trading standards and the police.'

[...]

David Bull, head of Leicestershire County Council trading standards, branded the conman 'sick'.

He said: 'It is sickening that older people are being threatened with fictitious taxes or fines, the loss of benefits or even death.

[Daily Mail]