if major changes or upgrades were made year-to-year?
Not every year but atleast a decent upgrade every 5 years and a new design every 10.
Salesman will always sell but they are hitting a new problem now. The machine hasn't really changed since 1991 .
My mate told me of two situations that arose recently and he said its fairly common.
In the first one the guy asked after the demo, what would it cost to do a full rebuild one one of these machines so the rep did some numbers and gave him a price, around a quarter the price of the new one, so the guy went to the garage and pulled out a old g5 and said here fix this one then its cheaper and its the same machine.
Another asked the same question and then right their bought a second hand one online .
The product needs to change enough to keep competitive with its predecessors too.
Why buy a new Merc over a old one, its still a Merc but the new one is safer more efficient , looks newer ( looks count allot ) has new features.
The world has changed allot since 1990, most homes back then still had wall to wall carpet, most modern homes have very little to none.
Your average cordless vacuum can vacuum hard floors as well as a Kirby can, possible even better. Kirbys big deal was it could suck dirt from under your carpet, very few of its competitors could do this and almost nothing bought in a wallmart could, that's what made them great but without carpet they have nothing special about them apart from their build quality but they are bulky to use on hard flooring and thats why so many new ones end up at goodwill. Its time for a rethink