Learned my lesson. I'll never again succumb to the urge to aid someone knocking at the door, claiming they represent university students looking for some work to tide them over the summer and earn a few dollars toward their tuition. But when I did open the door last Monday to see a nice, clean-cut-looking young man standing there, earnestly delivering his spiel, I relented, against my better judgement and said, sure, we'd consider hiring him/them to clean the outside of our house windows.

We usually get it done at least once a year, in the spring. For the past twenty years professional window cleaners have done their rounds in the neighbourhood, cleaning windows for those interested in procuring their services, and we always have been. At a relatively modest cost between $60 and $80. They are professional, it is not a perfunctory job they do, they focus on cleaning all of the windows, and the screen doors as well. It has never taken them long to complete the work, and we've always been satisfied with their work.

This time, why not give the work to young kids attending university? How much, I asked, stating what we usually pay for the job. Well, that's about right, said the young man. One of his colleagues, he said, would contact us and give us an estimate. And two days later an evening telephone call informed me that the fellow on the other end of the line wished to make arrangements to come over, survey the job to be done, and render his estimate. Why? I asked, why was it necessary to have a formal meeting over such a small, insignificant job? This was a house with a large number of windows, some of them sizeable, didn't they have a rough estimate? Nope, had to have an appointment.

Again, instead of heeding my better judgement and just cancelling the whole thing, I assented. And when the young man - not the same one who had originally knocked - came around, smoothly and with great self-assurance insinuating himself into the house - it is winter, after all, and you cannot leave someone standing on an outer door sill to freeze - complimenting the beauty of our interior stained glass windows in an effort to ingratiate himself, one's defences crumble.

This lad went on a tour of the house to count the number of windows, to measure their height, width, and to crunch numbers to determine the cost of cleaning them. He also mentioned that an additional service on offer was cleaning the eavestroughs, since they looked to his discriminating eye, as though they were covered with mould. Quite the eye he had, in the dark; the light of day might have revealed to this super-salesman that they were clean of mould.

The young man, glib and talkative, filled out a complex contract with all manner of interesting legalese, requiring our names in full, address, telephone number and etcetera; something we've never before encountered, and when I mentioned this and that I considered this rigmarole to be an utter time-waster, he kindly cautioned against work done by fly-by-night artists who would never do a commendable job.

When he finally did divulge the price for his priceless services - using, he explained at great length, special cleaning agents, taking special pains no other service provider even bothered with - we found it to be four times what we had previously paid. We'd get in touch with him, we said, with our decision.

Decidedly not interested.