I had a very suspicious encounter with one such salesperson yesterday at a local Westfield. She stopped me as i was passing by and kept complimenting me on my cheap converse sneakers, followed by how well i was dressed and how cute i was. Given that i was dressed in a cheap shirt, jeans and sneakers, it was obvious that the comments were not genuine. She invited me to try a sample and talked about how much it would improve my skin. What made me feel uncomfortable was that she kept making close physical contact with me and kept trying to flatter me by telling me how cute i was, asking whether i had a girlfriend and dropping hints that she would give me her phone number.

Infact, the seats at the kiosk were placed in a manner such that the salesperson (her) would be seated so close to the customer that her legs would be placed in between and touching the customer's legs. After constant flattery and telling me that their products would improve my skin so much that the girls would fall all over me, we moved on to talk about pricing. When i said i couldn't pay $299 for the facial treatment gel or moisturiser she was trying to sell me, she offered to discount it to $199, and then further down to $99 when i still wasn't interested in buying it. Eventually she threw in a free bar of soap which was supposedly worth $50 to try and close the deal. Throughout this conversation, her colleague also kept interjecting with compliments about my dressing and appearance to try and help her close the deal.

I finally agreed to pruchase the facial treatment gel for $99 if she would agree to give me a return guarantee that i could return the products if i failed to see any improvement. She agreed enthusiastically and said she would write it on the receipt, but when she printed the receipt, she tried to hand it to me without the written guarantee. When i kept insisting on it, she wrote an illegible word covered by her signature on the receipt and said that was the word "return" coupled with her signature and that would enable me to return the products. However, i didn't believe her since the word was illegible and the word "return" would have been too vauge to stand up in a court of law. Both of the salespersons then started to tell me stories about how they had customers return large amounts of products with no problems and showed me how much money they had made today to try and convince me to purchase the item without the written guarantee. They also made reference to the ACCC guarantees which they claimed would guarantee me the right to return it if i wanted to, but also pointed to a printed poster clearly stating "No refunds for change of mind" (which was also printed on the receipt).

When i kept insisting on the written guarantee, her colleague then started to type out a message on the computer which said "If the item causes the client a major problem such as affection or irriation , we are willing to to provide an exchange or refund" (all errors as was printed) and printed it as a receipt. I asked why they didn't just type a message stating that they would be willing to refund it if the products did not work as advertised, but they ignored me. I found this suspicious as the salesperson who i had been dealing with, called "Rosy", had claimed to be a manager of the Dead Sea chain and that her brother owns the entire chain in Australia, yet her colleague was helping her type a message on the computer to be printed out as a receipt and seemed to be more familiar with it's operation. Furthermore the receipt printed clearly showed that she was a "Consultant", not a manager, and her phone number printed on the receipt, which she claimed to be her personal phone number, turned out to be the generic Dead Sea phone number according to http://company.fm/Discovery/1300987907.html.

A quick search on the internet reveals many complaints about their sales practices, over priced products that do not work and even a New Zealand article about how Israelis were selling the same cosmetics in New Zealand illegaly on visitor visas (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5519017/WikiLeaks-delves-into-Dead-Sea-sales-scam). I am now concerned that any attempt to return the items for a refund will fail as the company will claim that they do not know for sure who "Rosy" is, refuse to honor the refund condition on the receipt or that she has left the country similar to what happened in the New Zealand article.