OK, I’m finally calmed down enough to blog about it. I was livid for days - an unusual occurrence for me. I tend to let things go, but this one stayed with me. And this post is going to be long, so I apologize in advance.

So someone knocked on my door offering to clean my carpets for free using a new dry-foam method, or something like that.  I had seen this before, and I knew immediately this was going to turn into a demonstration for Kirby vacuums.  The only reason I knew this was because it had happened to me before, and I was stunned to hear a sales pitch for a vacuum which included what a crappy housekeeper I was, and how I didn’t care about my kids, because look at all the dirt inside your carpet!!!  Anyway…

I said no.  I had already had the demo, and didn’t buy the machine.   The gal said that was fine, that she got points for the demo, and she was trying to get to Tahoe.  I don’t know why I care about her vacation plans, but whatever.  She said it would take 45 minutes, an hour tops.  I said last time it was a lot longer, and I don’t let strange men into my house without my husband home.  (Last time the guy wouldn’t leave until I got DH up from the basement to kick him out).She said it would be herself doing it, and she would it do at 7:00 p.m. with everyone here.

Fine.  My stairs needed cleaning, anyway.  And even though I hated the experience last time, with the high pressure sales dude, he did at least clean my carpet.  So she shows up at 8:00 p.m. and we decide it’s too late to do it, but she begs to come back tomorrow. Whatever.

The next day, she shows up, introduces me to someone ELSE who would be doing the demo (at least she was female) and I show her the stairs that need cleaning.  Instead, she walks into my living room and shows me all the dirt in my carpet, etc., etc.  Oh, great, here’s the full demo. There really wasn’t that much dirt in my carpet, though. It was great.  She kept going over a bigger and bigger spot, expanding every time…

“Look how much from just that one spot.” 

I was like “That was half my carpet, not just one spot.”

But, she was a little wary when she saw that I had a Dyson.  It was awesome.  She was like, “Well, they sell a lot of vacuums, but they’re so expensive, I don’t know why.”  Yeah, lady. I bought my Dyson for $300, and you’re trying to sell me a Kirby for $2000.  Don’t talk price.

She has me dump out my baking soda on the carpet, and then I go over it with my vacuum, and then she goes over it with her Kirby to show me how crappy my Dyson is….you know.  So, yes, her vacuum picks up baking soda after mine did.  But here’s the thing…it KEPT picking up baking soda, time after time.  I asked her why, if the Kirby is so powerful, it didn’t get it all the first time.  She had no idea what I was talking about.

“Just look at all the baking soda your machine didn’t get,” she’s saying as she changes these filter things that show me what her machine picks up. 

I point to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th filters.   “Just look at all the baking soda YOUR machine didn’t get.  Why didn’t it get it the first time?  It would impress me more if you vacuumed once, and then it didn’t come back at all the second time.”

She didn’t get it. 

“But the Kirby just keeps getting the dirt that’s deeper and deeper.”

“But that baking soda isn’t deep.  I just put it there.  You’re going over it like 10 times.  If I went over it 10 times, I’d get it, too.”

She did not understand the concept that her vacuum wasn’t getting it.

The greatest part was when she told me my vacuum continually put the dirt back into my air, especially when I emptied it, and then she vacuumed my air with a filter to show me how dirty it was, and the filter came out clean!  Nothing on it whatsoever! 

She kept coming back to how the Kirby cleaned the air, and I was like “But my air is clean.  You  just showed me that.” 

“It prevents asthma.”

I stared at her.

“OK, so it doesn’t PREVENT asthma…but it’s really good.”

“We don’t have asthma.  We don’t have allergies.  We are rarely sick.  Somehow we’re all surviving living in this filth.” 

Her supervisor showed up a couple of times, to make sure she was still demoing, even though we had long past the hour mark, and my stairs had yet to be touched.  He told her to clean a spot on my area rug, so she did half my rug, and threw some foam on my stairs.  She didn’t even vacuum them, and only threw foam on half the staircase.  She emptied the rest of the soap on my other area rug, to use it up.  I wondered why she wasn’t using it up on the rest of my stairs, but whatever. 

And here’s the thing..she RUINED my area rugs!  They’re now buckled and rippling, and my kids are tripping all over them.   The buckling has gone down, but yes, it’s still there, and it’s been five days.  When I called them to complain, they said to wait and see, and then call them back.  The supervisor was mad that she didn’t do the whole rug, he said it was drying unevenly or something like that.  Maybe my rugs will survive the trauma, but I’m still not sure. 

I didn’t ask for the RUGS!  I asked for the STAIRS, which are still dirty!  And she was here for a grand total of THREE HOURS, when I was promised clean stairs and an hour tops.   

Oh, and the thing stopped working a couple of times during the demo, which I found hilarious.  As she was fixing it, the gal couldn’t explain that, except to say that it was used by new people to demo who didn’t know how to use the machine.  I was like “How am I supposed to use it, then, if people who WORK FOR KIRBY cause it to break?”

I was mostly mad at myself for not kicking her out at the hour mark.  I was lured by the siren song of someone else carpet cleaning my stairs.  I should have just told her to get out.  I should have just said no, a lot earlier.  (I did tell her up front I wasn’t buying the machine). I shouldn’t have let them in my house to begin with, then my area rugs would be fine, I would have gotten my errands done that I had planned for that afternoon, and I’d be blogging about something much more fun. 

After she left, I took my Dyson apart and cleaned the filters, just to show it how much I loved it.

So learn from my mistake.  Just say no to Kirby, or to a free carpet cleaning service disguised as Kirby.