Kirby Vacuum Cleaners

Kirby Vacuum Cleaners • In-Home Demonstration • Three-day Return Policy • "Trade-In" Policy • Warranty Service • Poor Quality • Elderly & Infirm • Home Alone • Neighborhood Pests • U.K. Complaints • South Africa Complaints • Andrew's Kirby Adventure --- • Kirby Sweeps Up in West Virginia • Arizona Sues Kirby Distributors • Kirby Salesman Arrested • Salesmen Respond

The door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen has been the butt of many jokes. But unfortunately, the customer is seldom the one who walks away laughing. Best rule of thumb: never let any salesperson or solicitor into your home. If you ask someone to leave and they don't do so, call the police. It may seem harsh but it can avoid many problems, like those catalogued below.

Even a 15-year-old can see through most of the Kirby pitch, as Andrew recently demonstrated.

Heed this word of advice from Christie:
I worked at United Financial Consumer (a loan company for Kirby vaccums) office. The sales tactics used to sell Kirby's are much the same as Mattress Warehouse in that they mislead customers into thinking free financing when in fact after signing the bottom line you have just taken out a loan.

People they target are often elderly and they train young men and women that these customers are the ones to persuade. People who fall into debt often think they need to pay their car loan before they pay for their vaccuum, not realizing the type of loan they have signed is just as seriously detrimental to their credit rating.

Heads up on getting any type of financing: Look to see what company is actually doing the financing and before signing call the finance company and have them reiterate what the terms are!

We would add that every loan transaction must include a Truth In Lending statement that spells out the terms. Consumers need to read this carefully. It's almost always better to arrange a loan elsewhere, pay cash or do without.

B.j of Byron, GA October 5, 2007
We purchased a new Kirby Vacuum with attachments. I was led to believe that this would make cleaning so much easier. I have had nothing but problems every time that I try to use it. It is very hard to use. The instruction book is very hard to understand when trying to use the attachments. It takes several hours in trying to figure out. I have tried using the vacuum a total of 3 times, and each time I am worn out trying to get it to work. I have sent Kirby an e-mail 3 times, but with no response. This vacuum was purchased thinking it would make cleaning easier, but instead it is more difficult. We traded our Commercial Electrolux that we had only a few months. This worked fine, but did not have the attachments that I wanted for cleaning. I have requested that the Electrolux be retuned and my money refunded since the Kirby is so difficult to use and not cleaning properly.

I have been sending e-mails to the web that was on the owners book. We purchased from a sales person and did not have direct contact with the store. I got the address and phone from the telephone book. We live in a new house and when I tried to use the vacuum it made lumps in the carpet.  It was demonstrated as being very easy to use and what a fine job it would do in cleaning my house. I must say that it certainly is not.

Julie of Colorado Springs, CO October 1, 2007
I was sold a kirby vacuum with a floor care kit for my hardwood floors. The Demonstrator, Matt Kobilan,showed me the floor care kit by placing their wax product on my hardwood floor. He then used the buffer attachment that came with the Kirby. It was to buff it to a nice shine. It did that, but left a terrible film that smudged, left shoe prints, feet prints, wheel marks from the Kirby, and did not hold the shine. This was not found out until after Matt left, and I had done my entire 800 sq. ft. of floor. The wax will not hold a shine when buffed, and the company will not stand behind the product. They are claiming it to be my fault, even though the demonstrator did the very thing first. I followed directions, and it now has made my floors look terrible. I have contacted 3 differrent floor companies, and have quotes in the range of 2500.00 to strip the wax off my floor. I gave the Kiirby back after cancelling my contract in the allotted 3 days, and they still have not taken care of the matter.

My floors were damaged to the tune of 2500.00

Shazia of Piscataway, NJ September 28, 2007
Two men from the Kirby company came to sell a Kirby vacuum saying that they are a cleaning company doing free demos in our area.  After cleaning a part of a room, they started pressuring us to buy the vaccuum.  They kept on negotiating a price for 2-3 hrs, and did not leave the house when asked to. We finally bought the vacuum.  The accessories which were written and charged for in our sales agreement never arrived and the free demo of the machine we bought was never done. Until now this company has given three appointments for a sales demo and shipment of our supplies, but no one came on those dates.  The manager Mr Wilson never answered the phone after that date, and the staff that handles the phone call seem trained to fool the customers.  Please beware of this company selling stuff in Ny and Nj area.

1)We got a vacuum from an open box ,which we think is used. 2)the products and services which were a part of our agreement were never received. 3Poor customer service.

Marian of Jacksonville, FL August 29, 2007
A van parked in our cul de sac with several so-called kids, going to college, wanting to give free one room carpet cleaning and furniture cleaning. Young, attractive, dressed up, female approached me trying to set me up for any one of the salesmen to give me demonstration & free carpet cleaning. I said I wasn't interested because I have a rainbow. She said that was ok, they get credit for just giving you a demonstration and you get free carpet cleaning.

The young salesman did his 2 hour pitch as to what the Kirby could do not even attempting to clean bad area. I kept asking him how much the kirby was (I wasnt going to buy one) he finally said 5,000.

Going into hour 3, I finally said "start cleaning".  He attempted to, then stopped & did his spill again.  When he finally realized I wasn't going to buy the Kirby, he said he was lying about the 5k, it was only 1900 for me.

I said I had had enough and he needed to finish cleaning. He wouldn't, so I finally got my husband, Bill.  He argued with my husband - BAD call. Bill said, "get your crap and get out of our house".  He said, "sir, could you just let me use your phone". Bill said "no". He said "sir, I need to call my manager, would you call him".  Bill said "no, get out". He said "I don't have a phone". Bill said "NOT My problem, and if you don't get out now I am calling the police".

Just thought I was giving him credit for a demo which he said that is all he wanted and it wouldn't take long.  I will NEVER let ANYONE in my home again for ANYTHING. 

Michelle of Bartlesville, OK July 21, 2007

My son (17) went to a local job fair not knowing it was to sell Kirby's. They want him to do 4 days of training without explaining why they gave him a self-employment form 1099. Promising him 350 to 450 a week. When I confronted the supervisor about the promise of money, he was not willing to put it in writing. How can this company get away with this?

Kristin of Fortescue, MO July 7, 2007

Last night a Kirby vacuum saleswoman stopped by our house (without an appointment and at 8 pm!) and my husband let her in. He told her we didn't want a demonstration because it was time to give our one-year-old son a bath and go to bed. She begged and pleaded and asked if she could please just clean a stain and go. So we let her in (huge mistake!) and she proceeded to do her entire demonstration rather than just clean a stain.

She had us get our vacuum so she could compare and went through this huge spiel about If your vacuum only picked up 10% of the dirt, wouldn't it be dead to you? I thought that was strange, but then things got stranger. She took the cord of my vacuum and asked us to cut it with scissors (which we refused to do) and then took it and, in her own words, hogtied the vacuum because it was bad. Then she laid it down, told us it was dead, bowed her head, closed her eyes and asked if we wanted to say a few words over the vacuum. Then, get this, she started to hum Taps.

My husband and I were looking at each other in shock this whole time when she takes some dirt she vacuumed up with the Kirby and pours it over my vacuum, saying that my vacuum was now buried. I was blown away. When my husband told her we weren't interested, she ENDLESSLY asked him why not.

She was the slowest moving person I've ever seen and we couldn't get her to leave until midnight, and we had to buy a vacuum to get her to leave. I am thinking of returning it right now. Our little boy was running around the whole time because our house is too small to get away from the noise, so, needless to say, he didn't get to bed on time. We finally got her to leave after much prodding and vowed never to let a salesperson in again! In retrospect, we should have kicked her out immediately...I don't know what we were thinking!

Tiffany of Lakewood, WA June 10, 2007

Tiffany of Lakewood WA (06/10/07)
Dolores knocked on our apartment door asking if we would like a 10-minute free no-obligation in-home demonstration of a new vacuum cleaner. We would get a coupon for free pizza if we just had the demo. Being the nice person that she is, my sister let her and her husband in, with 3-4 boxes of equipment right after.

I noticed off the bat that Dolores loved to take her sweet time. I swear it took her and her husband a half hour to just take pieces out and put the actual vacuum cleaner together. So much for just a 10 minute demonstration.

She vacuumed the same small part of the carpet about 4 or 5 times and kept showing us the filters being absolutely dirty each time. I'm questioning whether the cleaner contained dirt on purpose to amplify the effect of the carpets being cleaned thoroughly. She also brought the shampoo in and demonstrated that by putting some suds straight on our carpet. Didn't even bother to clean that stuff up.

From when they stepped in until they actually packed up, they were in our apartment for about an hour. They didn't bother to pick up the several dirty filters that they had used and left them on the floor for us to clean up. But we did get a 20 Pizza Hut coupon for our troubles. On the plus side, they had only lowered the price of the vacuum once, and weren't really persistant when we said we weren't interested in buying the vacuum today. They just looked very dejected. Dolores even mentioned that if she made two more sales, her and her husband would get a free trip to Puerto Vallarta.

Overall, it wasn't a total nightmare compared to other people's experiences, but it was still quite annoying, and full of lies.

Susan of Junction City, KS March 31, 2007

Susan of Junction City KS (03/31/07)
About 7:30 p.m. this evening 2 men from the Kirby Co. came to my house. I told them I was not interested in their product but I did allow them to show me their product. 2 1/2 hours later I finally got the one man out of my house, I was very irritated with him and his boss because I could not convince them that I did not want their product, I was to the point of calling the police if they did not leave. They kept telling me how dirty my carpet was and tried to get me to buy a Kirby, I told them I could not afford one and they were very persistent and I was called crazy many times by them. My husband was not home at the time and they wanted a number where he could be reached, I became somewhat afraid of them and I would not recommend anyone letting them in their house.

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