The Door-to-Door Vacuum Salesman

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The Kirby Sentria

Have you ever heard of a Kirby vacuum cleaner? Of course you have! Your grandma probably had one...or coveted one. Both my mom and my mother-in-law had Kirbys...my mom still has the same one that we got used when I was about 10 years old. 

They are the BEST vacuum cleaners on the face of the planet. On this, there is virtually unanimous agreement. But... is a new Kirby $2500 better than your current one? Sure it can do windows and detail your car and unclog drains, but so can a roll of paper towels and a bottle of windex, the 16-year old car-nut down the street, and a toilet plunger. 

Last night, my husband and I were invaded by the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. I was going to write a post about our experience, but I found an excellent telling of the exact same story already online. I really wish I had read it yesterday afternoon before the psycho Kirby-bots from Hell rang my doorbell. The only differences between our experience and the one in the linked story are:

• our incident occurred on a Friday late afternoon around 5 pm.
• we were treated to a sort of harmlessly dorky and goofily earnest young man in a suit and tie minus the jacket instead of an attractive blonde.
• he was accompanied by his squat, slick 'boss' instead of a handsome associate.
• I was instructed to call a number on the flyer to schedule the appointment...which I didn't do and so was completely baffled when they showed up at my door 10 minutes later.

Otherwise, the experiences are identical almost to the letter.

Well, throw in 4 kids who were wanting dinner and a husband who got home from work at the exact same time as the 'presentation' was about to start and really just wanted a shower and a nap and to go to his buddy's poker game. It sucked. Almost as much as that Kirby can.

When they asked for my social security number to be written on a circular filter paper because they 'had no paperwork,' the red flags were whipping me in the face so hard the metal grommets drew blood (figuratively). No business cards. No product brochures. But sign a contract for a $3000 vacuum cleaner.  My husband did finally get pissed and very politely excused them from the premises.

They didn't get the sale.

But...

They did clean the filthiest part of the lovely pink carpet for free! 

That linked story takes you to a website that has other dirt on Kirby sales techniques and recruiting, in addition to some other interesting stuff. You might like to check it out :)