Door to door sales. Sleazy?

[collector2]

To be quite honest, getting rid of door to door salesmen has been very detrimental to both the industry and the consumer. Yes there always were some very shady salesmen. But there were also some very good ones. By having the salesman show the vacuum in the customers home the customer was educated on how to properly use it and how certain aspects of the machine would work best in the situation that they had. Now they rely on you tube etc., which half the time is done by people that don't actually know much about what they are talking about, and rarely has any real relation to the situations you will find in your own home.

 

[real1shep]

My only experience with Kirby since a teenager when my folks found a Dual Sanitronic 50 at a garage sale in very nice shape was this;
We had just bought our house in 1995. A phone call from a young gal named Comfort, if you believe that. She asked me if we had carpeting and would like a cleaner home and a visit and demonstration. I politely said no thank you.

What that boy told me, who had once worked for me, about his immediate boss and the Kirby way of doing business was no less than shocking. He was literally a piece of meat trying to sell their vacuums with an elaborate contingency plan if you say 'no'.

Kevin

 

[cheesewonton]

What that boy told me, who had once worked for me, about his immediate boss and the Kirby way of doing business was no less than shocking. He was literally a piece of meat trying to sell their vacuums with an elaborate contingency plan if you say 'no'.

Kevin

No different working in any aspect of the transportation and warehousing industries. I spent too many years in both working for crooks who became enraged when you wouldn't knowingly break laws of cheat customers so the boss could make a pile of money. I can honestly say that off the dozens of commercial employers I have had over my long life there were only two, a BMW motorcycle dealer and a small defense contractor, who were honest. The rest were abusive and dishonest, which is why I had so many employers, a couple of which I took to court for money they owed me and one I put out of business because they were sloppy and left me with enough info to get them in deep doo-doo with the tax authorities, workers comp officials and the highway patrol. Unfortunately I lost a couple of friends at one company because the owner and my immediate supervisor were more interested in profit than safety. And the upshot is that the owner of that company, after the third death, went to prison for a year and a half and was banned from ever owning a truck company again. So what did he do after getting out of prison? Start another truck company using a former manager of his from the previous company as the front man. That owner is back in Federal prison again after yet another welder blew himself up fixing one of their gasoline trailers and he tried to lie about not owning the company. Then while out on bail lied about laying off employees to get the Covid money being handed out, only he didn't lay anyone off. He will be in prison well into his 70s. The stuff Kirby does is bad but it's Romper Room stuff compared to what is going on in the transportation industry. Even FedEx where I worked for four years as a manager is highly dishonest, cheating employees and the tax man.

 

[herbicide]

From perhaps the late '80s early '90s can remember a Kirby salesman do the whole demonstration plus some, and then my dad saying no thank you. I remember it pretty well as I was disappointed we didn't get a new toy (was around 10-12 at the time)

At the time we had a Kirby Classic III, and I don't think the new machine performed any better. Fast forward a few years later they invested in a central vac system. Fast forward to today and its all robo vac and Dyson V12; they are in their eighties now; lugging the hose around and up/down stairs is too much.

 

[centralsweeper63]

Many people have had vacuum salesmen in their home and sadly a large amount of these experiences have been bad.

 

[vacerator]

One of our neighbors growing up came from a poor share croper family in Mississippi. Her husband was in the army there. She was 16 when they met. They married two years later and moved north for a better life. He wanted her to have everything. They spent like crazy and accumulated much debt. Their Kirby was repossessed. They were using a Hoover porta power instead.