Yesterday I was caught out by a very slick salesperson.
She showed up on my doorstep with her bouncy blonde pony tail just bubbling with innocent effervescence about the ‘new’ ‘carpet cleaning company’ that was ‘just starting up in the area’ and how they weren’t trying to sell anything, just looking to promote their company by offering free cleaning of one room. Before I even realised what was going on she had effortlessly confirmed our address, wiggled my name out of me and booked in a crew to ‘clean our biggest room’. All they asked in return, she said on her way out the door, was to recommend them to my friends.
It was only after she left that I managed to get a good look at the flyer she handed me and saw in very small print the name ‘Kirby‘.
Shit!
I am sooooooooo not interested in spending thousands on a vacuum that does no better job at ‘washing’ the carpets than the $32 hire machine from Woolies.
But then I figured I’d let them have a go at the stain near the TV unit before I hustled them back out the door.
Unfortunately I dropped the axe on my foot 10 minutes before they showed up. Mum wasn’t sitting through their spiel so told them to bugger off. They told her they’d be back today.
And back today they were.
The salesman arrives and is introduced to me by his manager. He thanks me for the opportunity to demonstrate the product for me as it is earning him points towards a prize (an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas). He is irritating me right off the bat by constantly addressing me as ‘Miss Bettina’. I’m not an American southern bell that needs a ‘Miss’ in front of her name FFS! Then he starts telling me how my Dyson is designed to break after a few years, then about this secret filter that apparently they don’t make obvious then use as an excuse to void your warranty blah blah blah which I just smiled and nodded at. They’ve obviously taught them to scare people off Dyson since the last time I saw the Kirby show!
After getting some of his ‘Kirby-is-so-much-better-than-Dyson’ shtick out of the way he gets about the business of vacuuming my living room. He first uses my Dyson which is still sucking a lot of dirt out of our ancient carpets. He then goes over it again with the Kirby which didn’t pick up very much at all in comparison to my Dyson or the other demo’s we’ve seen. Proof positive that the Dyson is doing it’s job. He’s explaining about the vibration technology that ‘lifts’ the dirt from under the carpet blah blah blah. I’m sitting there looking at the dirt on the pieces of black material that they use for demo’s and thinking “The dirt around our house isn’t quite that colour or texture”. It really made me wonder.
Then he vac’s part of the lounge and displays the *shock horror* dead skin cells. I’m meantime trying to figure out where the hell the cat hair is. There was none. None at all. None in the carpet samples, none on the lounge sample. With three cats in the house if my vacuum is so shit there should have been cat hair in his dirt samples. More proof in my mind that my Dyson is doing it’s job and doing it well. That, or the dirt on his sample cloths isn’t from my house at all, but sneakily put in there by him to aid the demo.
Then he starts telling me that dead skin cells and dust mites and all those dust mite legs and heads and bodies and stuff cause all asthma by which time I’m inwardly rolling my eyes and trying not to laugh at his ignorance. He continues to expand on this point telling me that they are the cause of all asthma, bronchitis and sinus problems and did I know they Kirby are built by the asthma foundation? Meantime he keeps asking me if I find that scary and really hones in on that “any doctor will tell you what I’ve said is true” and then tries to tell me that any newborn exposed to this will develop asthma by the time they are Tom’s age. Then he asked if anyone had asthma and starts telling Tom that when he finds it hard to breathe he should just go outside cos it’s the dead skin cells and dust mites inside that are making it hard for him to breathe at which point I told him to pack up and get out of my house.
He was quite stunned. I told him that I didn’t appreciate heavy handed sales scare tactics that preyed on people’s fears and he genuinely looked perplexed. Poor kid. He had no idea - he was just doing what he was told and he was so earnest about it, but damn! The sales pitch they are showing the kids is repulsive. He kept apologising for offending or scaring me. I tried explaining to him that I just didn’t like the sales spiel, that if he wanted to show me how good the product was that he should be doing it on the merits of the product, not by trying to scare the crap out of me with false or inaccurate information, but he obviously didn’t get my point and I was too off my face on painkillers to be bothered explaining to him exactly why I found his sales pitch so ridiculous.
What really ticked me off though was the dodgy advice he was giving TJ. As most parents of an asthmatic child knows there are many things that can trigger asthma. TJ’s triggers are colds & flu and changes in the temp/weather. I have noticed that he tends to be more susceptible to asthma if his diet has been out of whack, but that on it’s own won’t trigger an attack. To sit there and tell my son that his home is making him sick and to simply go outside was ludicrous, especially when cold night air would make an attack worse. The idea that they are telling other people to do such things who may not be as informed as I am was horrifying not to mention irresponsible. The implication to parents that it is their fault their children have asthma because they have not before had the tools to clean their house properly is replusive.
I have searched the Kirby website. There is nothing about being approved for asthmatics on it. You would think that if they were actually a company whose product was endorsed by Asthma foundations that there would be some kind of reference to this fact. Nope. Nadda. Not even on the page that talks about their supa dupa hepa filtration system.
Meantime if you go over to the Dyson website, they have a page containing asthma information including how their product will help you manage asthma in your home, but also links to reputable national asthma organisations and to the Sensitive Choice programme website - a programme that lists recommended appliances for helping to manage asthma in the home. Kirby isn’t listed there by the way. *snicker* .
And I didn’t even give them the chance to explain to me how many thousands of dollars this ‘you beaut’ product was going to cost me, chaining me into debt for many years to come as the price of my guilt and fear for giving my children asthma. *rolls eyes*
So this all just leaves one question. Why would a company with such a ‘good’ product need to badmouth it’s competitors, misrepresent it’s affiliations, spread false information about medical conditions, inflict guilt on parents and employ scare tactics?
I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Because they are as dodgy as all get out.
I don’t think I’ll be recommending their product to any of my friends.
