When did Kirby

[tolivac]

At one time ALL of the DTD vacuum cleaner salesmen were well dressed.Now its anything goes-i can understand no longer wearing the suits and ties-its hard to give a demo with these on-esp on a hot summer day in an unairconditioned house.I have gone thru this with TriStar. Filter Queen provides iniforms for their salesmen.This is a good idea.Just because the person is wearing a suit doesn't make him automatically reputable.And please remember if you buy ANY DTD vacuum cleaner brand on EBay or "online" the machine DOESN'T have a factory warranty.It can only be warranted by the seller.Buyer beware.I can agree greed and get rich quick are the problems in vac sales-in many of the DTD vacuum trade magazines-they show salesmen turned to regional distributers makes all kinds of money and HUGE homes and boats,and sporty cars.This can take MANY years to acheive.It won't happen overnight.Too many beginning salesmen are led to beleive the instant riches.And it leads to bad results for customers.Sometimes the best way to sell the DTD machine is let it sell itself-allow the cutomer to see the quality of the machine-forget the hype.He may then buy.On a couple of TriStar sales-the cusotmers were prior owners-the customer was writing the check as I was unpacking the machine!Just had to show her the diffrences in the new machine versus the old one.We let her keep her old machine as her second vacuum(I wanted it for my collection-was in beautiful shape)to use upstairs.Meant closing the sale.
oh yes-on the suits-this is a throwback--how many people wear suits and ties in the homes today???

 

[vacman117]

It really makes me angry, that tons of people get their Kirbys for VERY cheap, some of my family members did as well. But when we bought ours, it was over 2 grand. I really don't know WHY my mom paid for a vacuum, to be honest. I guess she is just not the negotiating type?

 

[jfalberti]

DTD vacuum sales is cut throat

When I sold Kirby back in the late 70's early 80's, our area office bordered on another distributor, about 10 miles away, if that. They were very heavy into door knocking, and it was not unusual for one of those sales people to knock on the door of a person who had bought a Kirby from our office. If it was within the 3 day cancellation period, they would quote the customer a lower price for the machine and encourage them to cancel and buy from them. Many is the time I would have to go back and try to save the sale. Sometimes the price quoted by the other distributor was so low, there was no way I could beat it, and I would end up picking the machine back up. Then I had the joy of cleaning out the machine, which was very well used by that time, and trying to sell it again. I never tried to resell it as new, but as a repo and only if the people really wanted a Kirby, but couldn't afford a brand new machine. Of course, we had new warranty cards and the buyer had full warranty when they bought one.