Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Salesman horror story

So let me tell you a little about my problem. I can't say no when someone is trying to sell me something. I often have buyer’s remorse even before I’ve purchased whatever it is they are selling. Let me give you a few examples: Sea Salt pedicure materials, nail buffer to bring out the natural shine in your nails (I had acrylic nails on when they sold this to me), a jewelry cleaning kit, many happenings books, and don’t get me started on the magazine salesmen. I’m pretty sure I get this awesome trait from my father. A few years ago their computer broke and instead of fixing it they decided to get rid of it. They weren’t able to cancel their Internet subscription so they were just waiting it out. Then when it came time to re-subscribed my dad gave in and signed another contract…they hadn’t even had a computer for the last 7 months! I blame him for my problem. Now here’s the story.


The Salesman Who Wouldn't Leave.

This sweet kid from Oregon was here selling Kirby vacuums door-to-door. But that's not what was said in the beginning. It started like this
him "hello ma'am"
me "hi"
him "you must be the woman of the home"
me "yep, what are you selling?"
him "I'm not selling anything we're actually going around cleaning people's carpet for free in hopes that if you like it you'll tell your friends and family about the product."
me "what's the catch"
him "there is no catch, this is just the cheaper way to advertise through word of mouth. Plus I don't have a face for TV"
me "you have a face for radio"
him "(fake laugh) good point so what do you say we clean your carpet?"
me "we just got new carpet last year I dont' think it needs cleaning"
him "we do upholstery and stairs too "
me "I don't think we're interested I'm sorry, thank you though"
him "well let me just show you how it works"
me "?? okay...Caleb, can you come here"

He started with this attachment to clean out the space by the sliding glass doors.

Caleb pretending he was interested. We were just waiting for him to shampoo our stairs.
Here I am testing out the couch cleaning attachment.


This is the couch that he was going to shampoo after he showed us how the vacuum/shampooer worked.

I'm doing some dusting now. 
 We had just got dinner before he showed up so I made Caleb listen to his spill for a bit so I could eat my food.
 He vacuumed our bed. It was gross, he told us some really disgusting facts that I was able to find here. I wouldn't recommend reading it while eating.
 He had to change these filters every minute or so to show us the amount of dirty/dust he was cleaning up.
 My house that was clean before he entered now looked worse than ever.
 Finally after many "NO, we are not interested in purchasing this vacuum for $2,650" he called in the closer.
There were multiple calls to "the boss" to see if he could lower the price. Even though we told him we wouldn't even buy it for $200. He still continued on his spill. Finally we told him he had to leave because we were going to a movie. (The Killers, it was way good by the way) His boss apparently came to help him seal the deal but we weren't having it. I don't care that he didn't shampoo the carpet or clean the couch like he said he was going to do.I just wanted them out of our house. That is 3 1/2 hours of my life that I will never get back. Thanks Kirby, I'll use my word-of-mouth to tell everyone how crappy/persistent your silly sales techniques are.

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