The Kirby Conundrum
by August 21st, 2008 Patrick GreerI was on a roll this afternoon working from home getting quite a few projects done when a knock came at the door. The young lady with clipboard in hand told me they were opening up a new store near the local McDonald’s in which they were going to be selling a “new cleaning product.” I should have know better. I knew it was probably a carpet or vacuum cleaner sales person but heck, we needed our carpet cleaned. I don’t mind giving another business the benefit of the doubt and spending a little time listening to their sales pitch, after all we are selling a service and product to customers in our community as well.
No, an hour or so would have been fine as I usually take that amount of time out during a break anyway. This afternoon the lady giving the demo dropped by around 3pm. It’s now 8:41pm and she is still her packing up after her manager showed up as basically pressured us to buy this high dollar vacuum cleaner/cleaning system. They gave us a price at about half of what their retail price is but I turned down their offer on principle. To tell the truth I would have loved to have had the system. As far as I can tell it’s a quality product but their sales methods of invading homes and pressuring home owners is despicable not to mention they took over 5 hours of my time I could have used to be more productive and service my own clients yet I had to sit their and listen to her describe ever single attachment and tell me how “dirty” my house was. Kirby vacuum cleaner, you may have the best vacuum in the business (I don’t know for sure) but you’re not going to turn me into a customer for the following reasons;
- You stole 5 hours of my valuable time
- You pressured me to purchase outside of my budget when I was not expecting you
- You insulted my previous buying decisions (I still love my Oreck, I don’t care what you say)
- You made me do a lot of the work when I was told your sales rep was going to do the “cleaning” and be my “maid.”
- Without going into great detail your sales people, both the initial canvasser and the person who did the demo along with her manager were not dressed appropriately. From very revealing tops on the females to totally unprofessional and bummy looking clothes on the men.
- Towards to end the manager invaded my house without even waiting from me to answer the door. I should have called to police right there and had you arrested for unlawful entry. I don’t care if your sales person was already in the house.
What is the Conundrum? It may be a quality product and my life and house may be a lot more cleaner (I can’t 100% verify that) but your sales methods and taking up a big chunk of my day turned me off from ever being a customer. To be fair the girl giving the demonstration did an excellent job and she was very gracious. I could tell she was being forced to present stuff they way she was because of her manager or corporate policy. If could suggest things to Kirby to make their lives easier and to keep people like me from writing posts like this I would do the following;
- Keep your demonstration to no more than 1 hour - even if someone is at home it doesn’t mean they have a lot of free time. Some of us are working from home and even if we aren’t working Don’t stay past my supper time! I was about to pass out from hunger! I can’t make a buying decision in that state!
- Don’t give me some story about opening up a store selling a new cleaning product and then come in my home telling my how Kirby has been around since 1914!
- Don’t ask me to tell my friends and family how great you are before you make your sell. Yeah, I’m going to tell my friends, family and anyone who reads this blog how you wasted half my day and insulted me in my own house.
I wasn’t an entire loss. I knew they may be a good blog post in this either way which is one reason I permitted the encounter. Later in the evening I did a search and found a very long string of recent similiar complaints on the consumeraffairs.com web site. I speak often about what a valuable tool blogging is but is your business prepared to be “blogged about?”
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
So, how did it happen that you allowed someone to change one hour into five? You should have asked at the front how much time she needed, and then forced her to honor that contract or set another time to come back. After 45 minutes I would have told her that she has a maximum of 15 more minutes and plan to wrap up accordingly. If they refused to leave I would have escorted them (and their equipment) to the door. If they refuse to go, a threat of calling the police would be enough (trespassing?). Are you being rude? Yes. But they were rude first, and sometimes that is the only way these tactics can be managed. Many of us, especially in the south, are often too nice when people abuse us. I agree that Kirby went way too far, but they do it because they have learned that it works … and people let them do it.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
We’ll she never said the cleaning demo would only take an hour but that is all I should have given her. I wasn’t there the whole time either. My wife came in about halfway through. The last time someone made a similiar call it was from a competitor, Rainbow. Rainbow stuck to a good schedule and was a lot more professional. Another creepy and sleezy thing Kirby did was drop this “poor girl” of in their van and basically abandoned her at our house. I admit I had a weak moment letting them in but I’m glad I was strong enough in my commitment to not buy into something like that.
My point however is that the entire time I was taking mental notes as a business owner myself watching things I could do to make sure we never do those things. If anyone has ever seen the movie, Napoleon Dynamite the character of Uncle Rico comes to mind.