Hawaii’s Better Business Bureau issued a consumer alert earlier this year after receiving complaints about aggressive door-to-door salesmen hawking a household cleaning solution.

Residents say sales representatives for a concentrated liquid cleaner called Advanage are difficult to get rid of and push to get into their homes, and one resident said the cleaner did not perform as promised, Hawaii’s BBB said.

Timothy Caminos, communications director for Hawaii’s BBB, said the organization began receiving complaints about the company’s sales tactics and cleaning product late last year in Hilo and East Hono­lulu and said it is now receiving complaints from Windward Oahu.

Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman Michelle Yu said the department has received calls about Advanage salespeople from different parts of the island.

At the end of January, Hawaii’s BBB issued a consumer alert warning of aggressive Advanage salesmen.

"The salespeople are pushy and aggressive, using sales tactics that might not be ethical or very trustworthy," Caminos said.

Arnold Bowen, controller for manufacturer Austin Diversified Products of South Holland, Ill., said, "We push for them (our distributors) to train their people in what they should do and the appropriate sales tactics to use and so on. … If there’s a problem, we address that with our distributors and have them address it with their salespeople."

Jeannine Johnson, Niu Valley Neighborhood Board secretary and a Neighborhood Watch block captain, said she was approached by an Advanage salesman and that a neighbor spoke of "a person matching that description who came around trying to get into her home to show the product."

"I’ve heard from people in other communities — one in Mililani or Waipio and another in Hawaii Kai — of people being dropped off and walking around for hours trying to make sales and get into people’s homes. It’s just uncomfortable and makes you wary."

Many of the salesmen are brought into Hawaii from the mainland by California-based International Sales Inc., said Donald Davis, vice president of the company. Three members of the 20-person sales force are from Hawaii, he said.

"Our biggest problem hasn’t been because our salespeople are pushy or aggressive," he said. "People thought we were casing people’s houses. They thought we were going to come back and break in because people didn’t know exactly who we were. We’re strangers and they don’t know what to connect us with.

"Bad news travels faster than good news, so we tell our salespeople, ‘You’ve got to be on your best behavior. There’s no reason to enter a community unless you can leave it better than you found it.’ We don’t condone if our salespeople are being overly persistent. In the sales field, your job is to please people to render a service."

Davis said the company plans to continue selling the product in Hawaii and is currently looking for office space.

"When you’ve got a cleaning product that works, you want to share it, so I wanted to come here," he said. "And we absolutely want to expand the sales force to include (more) locals. … We just ask that the public be open-minded."

Caminos said Hawaii’s BBB received one complaint about the product itself.

"Apparently, the cleaning product doesn’t work," he said. "It’s a watered-down version of something else. It isn’t different from something you’d find at the store."

Bowen responded, "We get complaints like that where the person is not going through the instructions as laid out in the brochures and on the back of the bottle, but different jobs require different dilutions. Most of the time, they’re using the wrong dilution. … We stand by our product."

Caminos said residents can expect to see an increase in door-to-door solicitation in the coming months.

"It’s kind of an ongoing thing, but during this time of year, spring is when it really gets bad and it goes through summer," he said. "It dies down around fall and then starts to pick back up around winter."

HPD’s Yu said of door-to-door solicitors: "Sometimes they might be using aggressive or unorthodox sales tactics, but it’s not criminal. We don’t have any criminal complaints at this time. We have had numerous inquiries, but they haven’t been linked to specific crimes."