Solicitors must have a business license

A First Take I wrote recently about a door-to-door scam prompted enough reader response to deserve a follow-up.

If you live in Yuma, solicitors must have a city business license to ring your doorbell. Before they can get a license, they have to be fingerprinted and pass a background check.

So ask to see the business license and the solicitor's city of Yuma ID. If a solicitor tells you his/her boss has it, that's unacceptable, says Yuma Police Officer Cruz Vidal. “Every solicitor must be individually licensed.”

Only non-commercial activities such as political campaign workers and church and nonprofit groups are exempt from the license requirement.

Solicitors working outside city limits don't need a license, but Yuma County Sheriff's Capt. Eben Bratcher said they should be able to provide you with information about the company that can be verified through the Better Business Bureau. If they can't, or if they use high-pressure sales tactics, he said, “that's a red flag.”