Like everyone else in Ciao who has written reviews on the infamous Kirby, I too once worked to them. I was only there for a few months, but it that time you learn quite a bit about the product itself and the sales techniques when you are working about 80 hours a week for them.
As many of the other reviews have said, the Kirby is an outstanding product. In the short time that I was employed by them, I did roughly 80 demonstrations and sold 3 machines. What I will do in this review is go through the demo as I was taught to present it, and will hopefully be able to shed some light on what in the salesman's script is true and what is a load of hogwash- a Kirby salesman will always be willing to tell you that the moon is made out of blue cheese and that Elvis is now working as a porter in the Holiday Inn in Bangkok if he thinks that it will influence you to buy a Kirby.
The first part of the demo involves getting a phone call from one of the telesales people. They will tell you that you have won a runner up prize in a prize draw of getting your carpet shampooed- they will make no mention of the 2 hour sales pitch that you will have to listen to. The unsuspecting person who receives the call jumps for delight, not realising that they are about to be roasted until they either by a Kirby or chuck the salesperson out of the house.
When you first arrive to do a Kirby demo, you set up your kit, while asking apparantly innocent questions. Here is a sample conversation that you will have when the Kirbyman first calls in.
Kirbyman - "How long have you lived here?"
You- "10 years."
Kirbyman- "That's great! I would imagine house prices were a lot lower back then!"
You- "Yeah, we bought ours for and now its worth ."
Kirbyman- "Fantastic! What do you work at yourself?"
You- "I'm a and my wife is a ."
You have just told the Kirbyman that you own your own home, that you are both working fulltime and that you will probably qualify for finance. At this stage, the Kirbyman will call his
boss to subtley let him know if it is a good situation or not. If it is a bad situation, ie unemployed, retired or housing exec, the boss will tell him to do a quick shampoo and move on to the next one. If it is a good situation, the Kirbyman will continue.
The Kirbyman will now proceed into the demo. It starts off with a small amount of background on the company itself, Mr James B Kirby and his variety of inventions, and probably the biggest lie of the whole demo. You will be told that there is a competition for a holiday to New York, that the plane leaves tomorrow, and that you are in second place and need one more sale to qualify for it. The reality is that there is a holiday to New York, but it is 2 months away and the salesman only qualifies if he manages to sell 15 Kirbys in a month. The idea is that if people like the Kirbyman enough, that he will get a holiday if they buy his Kirby should be enough to swing them if they are undecided. Surprisingly, it actually works. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I played this up quite a bit in the demos where I sold, and it really can make a difference. Just be aware that its actually a load of b******s.
The next thing that the Kirbyman will do is tell you the price- £2000 for a brand new Kirby, but you "can have one from as little as £2 a day if you really want it." I'll come back to this at the end of my op, because this isn't the real price. I'll explain why later.
The demo itself starts next. The Kirbyman will show you a box full of attachments that come with the Kirby, but to be honest these are mainly trinkets to help the person justify spending that amount. Here is a list of the accessories that you get with it. All of these attachments work with the Kirby set up as a cylinder cleaner (a vacuum cleaner with a hose on it, as opposed to an upright cleaner.
Zip brush- A brush with a round head that, when you put it onto the Kirby, has a bit in the middle that spins and cleans right down into things like sofas, car seats etc. It looks pretty impressive when you see how much stuff you pull out- but then again, who really ever hoovers their sofa?
Brush for dusting- The Kirbyman will put this on, dust a few things around your living room, and will lift a lot of dirt. Most of this dirt comes from the lampshade- again, most people never clean their lampshade.
Crevice tool- The big long tool that reaches into places that are hard to clean- ie down the back of your sofa. A lot of dirt will be lifted from here, mostly bits of food. Most people are mortified when they see how much comes from down there.
Spray gun- You can use this to spray almost any light fluids- the Kirbyman will probably show you the suds that come out whenever you put shampoo into it
Inflator/deflator nozzle- The Kirby can either suck or blow air, and this little thing goes on the end so you can inflate things like airbeds, swimming pools, balloons, etc.
Standard cylinder cleaner head- There's really nothing to impressive about this, and to be honest with you, you would never really use it.
Most of these little gizmos will probably spend the majority of their lives in your shed- they do have their uses but most people eventually forget that they even have them eventually.
After working his way through these accessories, the Kirbyman will produce the main feature of the Kirby- the main head. This is the reason why most people buy a Kirby. It works by vibration- its is offbalanced so that it cleans deep into the carpet. This part of the machine truly is amazing, and the Kirbyman will do a variety of tests to illustrate this.
The 100 times test- The Kirbyman will pick a patch of carpet and go over it 100 times with your own hoover. Just to prove a point, he will ask you to go over it as well to make sure he wasn't cheating. You will obviously put in a lot of effort to make sure that the area is clean, hoping to leave this arrogant salesman with nothing to say. When you go over the same patch 5 - 10 times with the Kirby, you will pull up an amzing amount of dirt.
The bed test- This involves bringing the Kirby up to the bedroom and running it over your bed. He will usually take about 4 samples then bring them back down to the living room. The results of this test are disgusting- it normally looks like someone has taken a handfull of flower and thrown it onto the cloth. He will explain to you as gruesomely as possible that this is dead skin, mites, and mite s**t. Apparantly this IS a big thing that aggravates asthma.
The sand test- The Kirbyman will throw white sand onto your carpet, then ask you to clean it up with your hoover. He then goes over it with the Kirby and , once again, lifts a lot of the white sand out of the carpet. This is to show that your hoover doesn't lift the dirt, it pushes it into the carpet to hide it.
The stripe test- This test is only done if the person has a cylider cleaner, and is more of an argument for an upright cleaner in general. If you look on the bottom of a cylinder cleaner head, there is only a gap of about 1 inch that actually sucks. The rest of the head is there purely to make you think that you are cleaning a wider area than you are. For the stripe test, the kirbyman will run your cylinder cleaner head across one of the bed samples, and it will leave a stripe about an inch long down the middle. He will then quite smugly do it with the Kirby, which cleans the whole cloth.
The cigarette test- You may only get to see this one if the salesman is a smoker- just to prove that the Kirby is not so powerful that it ruins your carpet, you can loosen the tabacco in a cigarette, put it into the kirby head, and it lifts the tabacco out of the cigarette without damaging the paper. You can stick a pen into the head of the dyson and it will rip the pen to bits.
The Kirby also comes with a carpet shampooer. The salesman will usually do a small patch first to show you the difference between shampooed and unshampooed carpet, and obviously the shampooed bit looks far better. This is only because the carpet is wet- It usually dries back to the same way it was originally.
There is also a bit of the Kirby that you can use to wax wooden floors or tiles.
The Kirby is extremely durable. The main part is made out of stainless steel and the rest of it is made out of Neopreen, the same material that the police make their riot shields out of. The only part that is likely to go is the belt- if you do decide to buy one, make sure you ask the Kirbyman to give you a handful of belts to keep you going for a while. He will usually be only too happy to oblige.
After seeing the demo, everyone is convinced that the Kirby is a quality machine. The only obstacle at this point is the price. The sales man will show you a price of £2000, with 2 different payment plans that are actually designed to be too expensive and to make the person say no. After being told that you are not going to buy one, the Kirbyman will say something like this-
"Ah well. Tell me this, just out of curiosity, would you have bought one if it had been affordable?"
You, thinking the sales pitch is over, say something like
"Yeah, maybe if it had been about £500 cheaper I would have bought it."
Kirbyman- "Ah well, thats too bad. Do you mind if I ring my boss and let him know I'm done before I lift my stuff and leave?
The Kirbyman gets on the phone to his boss, tells him what price they would have bought it for, and the boss asks to speak to them. The boss will then drop the price to whatever they said they would buy it for, knocking off money for things like trading in your own cleaner, taking the demonstration model that the salesman has used, not taking particular parts of the Kirby, and paying cash instead of making payments. £1200 is usually the price that the boss will offer, but I did one demo where the person offered £1000 and the boss eventually accepted. When you get off the phone, you have been offered the price that you said you would buy it for, so you are stuck and either have to buy it or chuck the salesman out with a red face.
The Kirby is a unique machine in that it easily surpasses any other vacuum cleaner I have ever seen. It does have its faults- it is noisy and heavy, and if you ever do need to get repairs carried out on the machin, it can be expensive. The worst part about the Kirby, though, is the people who actually sell them.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: so many machines in one. motor driven lightweigt to use Disadvantages: A bit heavyto carry upstairs (you just need to carry it by handle base)
Nitso 10.07.2008 (10.07.2008)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of KirbyG4
Advantages: Superb cleaning power, loads of accessories Disadvantages: heavy, a bit awkward sometimes and bags and cleaning liquids are hard to get and expensive
ramcharan 22.12.2000 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of KirbyG5
May 30th, 2004
very helpful by (88%):
helpful by (9%):
off topic by (3%):
