Sketchy Sales Call About Water Testing

Below is a transcript of a phone conversation i had with a water company. they sent me a water test kit in the mail, unsolicited. i'm relatively new to the neighborhood so I assumed it was from the official municipal water company. However, it was a private company that (I assume) would use this opportunity to sell me something I don't need.  

I started recording because I was curious about the results of the test and wanted to capture the specific numbers so I could check them out later.   I was also surprised this wasn't an official government request, but didn't think it would be a sketchy sales call.  I missed the part of the conversation when he told me he wasn't from the town / municipality or when he mentioned that they sent the test kit because of a bacterial "bloom".  I started recording once he started discussing the results of the test.  

To get the transcript I put the call on speaker phone and used the MacOS voice memos application to record the conversation on my laptop.  Then I ran the audio through an AI-based audio transcriber script I wrote to get the text from the call.

After I got the transcript I pasted it into chatgpt to see what it thought about the results.  It figured TDS is Total Dissolved Solids, which the EPA recommends be below 500mg/L.  This person didn't go into detail on the units but 50 sounds pretty low if he was using the same measure. 

He mentions water hardness, which GPT suggests could be related to calcium and magnesium salts.  He didn't give levels but said it was good.  Then finally he mentions pH, which is related to acidity / alkalinity.  He mentions the water is at a 6, but he never sent the actual report so I don't know if he was rounding, exaggerating, or actually being accurate.  The EPA recommends pH levels between 6.5 and 8.5.  

I tried digging into the pH a little more so I can understand what effects might a slightly acidic pH might have.  It seems that different bacteria and fungi can grow at a wide range of pH and there is nothing magical or dangerous about 6 in particular.  In fact, at the link above they indicate that "Most bacteria are neutrophiles and grow best at near-neutral pH".  This would meant that a neutral pH of 7 (in the EPA "good" range) is actually where bacteria thrive.  

The reason I wanted to share this conversation is I thought this is a really good example of some bad sales tactics. Specifically, this person was preying on my fears to try and sell a service. Asking if I have a family, telling me that I should be concerned for their well being, telling me that having water with a ph of 6 causes cancerare all trying to play up this fear factor. Kind of like a when a private investigator threatens principal Skinner by shuffling his neatly stacked papers.  

In the end I told him to email me the report and i'd call them back once i had a chance to review it. They never sent the report. 🤷. It's too bad because if I saw something bad I might actually be motivated to get my water tested by an independent company of MY choosing to do a second review. 

I don't think it's warranted at this point to test my water, partly because I read my municipal water company's annual reports and it seems pretty safe.  They go into detail about the mineral content of the water, treatments they do, and where the water comes from.

So I hope anyone seeing this is not fooled into taking unsolicited advice from sketchy sales folks using fear-based tactics to get you to do something you wouldn't otherwise do.

Transcript below:

Sketchy Water Testing Company: So to start, yours actually came at the TDS level, actually came in at 47, which is actually not too bad. Anything over 50 or higher is actually concerning, but that wasn't too bad on that end. However, you did have a low P-H level. Are you aware with the P-H fields about? 

Me: Why don't you tell me? 

SWTC: OK, so anything. So P-H levels are actually related to the acidity or the alkalinity of the water. Anything below a seven is actually considered to be acidic, and yours actually came in at a six. So when you have acidic water, bacteria tends to grow in the water. It also can lead to cancer cells primarily. That's really the big thing that we look at when we're talking about P-H levels. So that did come back low. So that was the reason for concern here. So to break that down. And then we also tested the hardness of the water. Luckily, that wasn't too high. So we wouldn't really have to worry about that initially. But like I said, the acidity of the water is definitely not good. Anytime you're consuming that, or even when you're showering or cooking with that water, you're putting yourself at risk of that. So I don't know if you have a family or anything, but anytime you guys are using that, it's definitely not a good thing to be having in the water. 

Me: OK. 

SWTC: Understand? 

Me: Got it. 

SWTC: OK, so is that concerning to you? 

Me: I don't know. Should it be? I'd be. 

SWTC: I definitely would be. You have a family? Is it just you right now? I got family. OK, yeah. You don't want to be cared about your family. I'm sure you concerned about them too. I know I would be. So what we can do for us is if you're open to it, we can send somebody to your house for free to actually take a look at the water and they can actually give you the results in front of your face to see if you're cool with that. Does that work for you?