Very Persistent and Annoying Saleswomen

by David
(Watertown, NY)

I was at home one Saturday afternoon, just got home after buying some groceries. I heard the doorbell ring unexpectedly. When I opened it, two women were standing there.

They mentioned they were with the Kirby cleaning company - so on and so forth and they were offering a no obligation 45 minute - 1 hour long demonstration. At first I thought they were a cleaning company, not trying to sell cleaning equipment.

I told them I wasn't interested at first because I had to put away groceries and then I wanted to watch my favorite football team play. I am a 25 year old single white guy so they tried flattering me and flirting to try to get me to change my mind.

One of them went so far as to give me a hug, and then she got on one knee and took my hand and kissed it. I kept on saying no and they said they'd come back later that night. Just to get them to leave I agreed.

They returned right when they said they would.

I sat through the demonstration which consisted of them comparing this vacuum to my current one. They looked at my current one and would make fun of it and kind of make fun of me for using it. I will admit the vacuum cleaner is a pretty decent machine.

However their sales pitch really put me off. These two girls made very thinly veiled sexual comments the whole time to try to sway my opinion. I played along but I knew what they were trying to do, they are in sales after all.

So towards the end of the demo one of them says "so do you want to talk numbers?" I am used to hearing this from car dealerships, not vacuum cleaner saleswomen. Before they came back to my house I did search the company online and saw that they will try to sell me the vacuum for $2,400.

They did offer me $300 as a trade in for my old one. Even with all the discounts they offered it was still like $1,600. No vacuum is worth that to me. So me just saying no was haggling to them, and they went down to $800 plus tax.

I told them I just didn't want it for anything more than what I told them it was worth ($500). So as expected, one girl called her boss and she pretty much repeated what he said to her on the phone making one last ditch sales attempt. When that failed, they sort of accepted defeat and began packing up their stuff.

What they do is bring in an allegedly new unit, take it all out of the box, and assemble it to use it for the demonstration so you'll buy that exact one. It took them a while to put all of their stuff away. I wouldn't say they were rude or abusive when they knew they weren't getting the sale, but they did have a noticeable change in demeanor.

No longer were they acting very nice and flirty, they were really trying to guilt trip me for not buying it and said I would regret not buying it. They also said I wasn't helping them in some competition to win a trip from their employer.

All in all the whole thing took like an hour and a half. Bottom line is, if someone shows up to your house and says they're from the Kirby company, just stand your ground and say you don't even want the demo.

They'll back down eventually.