Last Sunday, during remote church in our living room, a contractor (without a permit) knocked on our door and asked if we wanted the hole in our driveway filled in. Not the best timing. Garden City has gotten a bit of a reprieve from the constant stream of people wanting to fix our siding, roof, windows, driveways, HVAC, mow the lawn, change our energy supplier or whatever during the pandemic, but that’s slowly changing back to normal now. So, what can residents do?

Consumer Reports has six recommendations for actions you can take to make it less likely for people to bother you. Those are a good place to start. The FTC has some recommendations here and the FTC’s do not call list is here. That page also has a link where you can report violations, but last time I tried, I found the process is not easy.

Another action I discovered today is that, if you log into your PECO account and go to my account -> my profile -> my account profile at the bottom is an option to stop PECO from releasing your information to energy suppliers so that should reduce the volume of offers to change your energy supplier. Note that you’ll have to redo this every 3 years, as if people could possibly remember that.

As for solicitors, the township has the approved permits listed here. You can call the police if any other solicitor knocks on your door and they will be cited for the violation. But as we’re heading into peak campaign season, remember that religious and political groups are protected by the first amendment. Many houses here have no soliciting signs, but I’m not sure how successful those are.