I'll start my consumer complaints on a positive note by saying that the 2012 Kirby Vacuum Sentrina is great. It's the most powerful multi-use vacuum i've ever seen and in fact, it's such a good piece of equipment that if you let a salesperson into your house, you will want this machine by the end of the demonstration, I can guarantee it. Everyone has a use for this machine. Although it's simply not worth the ridiculous price they want to charge you. Take my advice: Go order one off the internet, DO NOT let the salespeople push you around in your own home, staying there for hours past their welcome, possibly stealing things, using your bathrooms, and eating your food. Do not accept a free shampooing or fall for the old trick that you're helping this salesperson win a contest, EVER.
My story is similar to the other ex-employees here and first I will say thank you to all the people across America that said they feel bad for me. Now I get to join them and feel bad for everyone else that is currently being suckered at the moment and i hope that they do what i did, and Google "Kirby Reviews" as fast as possible... I hope they land on this site and read the stories i've read and the story im going to tell.
Me and my friends were looking for warehouse jobs on Craigslist and came across this posting, i will copy/paste below:
NO EXPERIENCE NEC.*-Call for interview—START TOMORROW—$month
Of course we clicked the link and here's what it says:
"Established local expanding company has immediate openings for
individuals that are energetic, outgoing, friendly, coachable and are
interested in an opportunity for advancement in a fast-growing
environment. No experience necessary... All training provided! This is
an Entry-Level position with a starting base pay of $month.
Management positions available for those who qualify."
*All positions are FULL-TIME and PERMANENT!
*Must be neat in appearance
*Must be able to start immediately
*18
*Fluent in English
*ENTRY LEVEL*
- Packing/Assembly
- Customer Service
- Set-up & Display
- $2,000/base pay
This posting is INCREDIBLY vague and we should have known right away that this seemed shady. But we are desperate for work and this posting looks good. So we called and some lady answers and tells us that the manager who posted this ad on Craigslist went on vacation and wont be back till the following Monday and that we should call back then. My friends and i wondered why the manager would post this ad up on Craigslist telling us to call immediately/start next day and then 2 hours later go on vacation. Hmm... That was the 1st red flag.
We waited till the folowing monday and then we called back, we were transferrred to the manager who posted the ad or pretended to. He asked us if we were looking for work and how many people can we bring to the interview. We were just excited to have an interview but still... The guy didn't offer us any information about the job. He just told us to come in the next day and interview and then he hurried off of the phone. We assumed it was going to be warehouse work since that's what we typed on craigslist and the office address was located in an industrial warehouse section of the city.
We went in for the interview at a small 1 floor office building and this guy interviewed me and my friends at the same time. We asked where the warehouse is located and where we will be working and he tells us that it's actually a customer service position and he proceeds to asks us one by one if we are willing to do that. He then tells us that the job is selling Kirby vacuums, followed by his rags to riches story and also tells us "dont believe all the negative things we've heard about Kirby because they're not true." We eventually said yes we suppose we can do a sales position for $2000 base pay a month with no sales required. So he tells us to come back the next day for orientation and then there will be 4 days of training after. We asked him if it is paid training and he said yes with no hesitation. The next morning we go to the orientation and then we stood in front of the room one-by-one and said a little about ourselves. Most of these other "employees" looked like drug addicts and gang members. After this we are quickly given a paper to sign saying that we are okay with not being paid for orientation and training... Hmm... This guy, who the day before told us that it is paid orientation and training, is now handing us a paper saying otherwise, and we would have to sign it to attend the orientation and get the job... 2nd red flag
He immediately goes into how much money we will make and he scribbles some numbers on the whiteboard and talks about how Kirby doesn't spend any money on advertising because they want to pay us directly to advertise for them by selling their vacuum through appointments and word of mouth. Keep in mind that my friends and i had never heard anything like this and the guy was very convincing. He told us all we would have to do is 70 appointments to get the $2000 at the end of the month. Sounds easy huh? Well it gets more and more scandalous as the process goes on. We asked him if the appointments are set up for us, or if we have to go set them up ourselves. He tells us that the appointments are already set up for us we just go and show the customer the vacuum. My friends and i were very suspicious about these required 70 appointments because after doing the math we noticed that it's going to be close, almost not even possible to hit that mark. He starts to tell us the daily routine of the job starting next week: that we all meet up at the office every morning at 10am and we pile into vans and then drive an hour or two out to a neighborhood somewhere and go knocking door to door all day long... But wait, if it's door to door knocking then the appointments aren't really set up beforehand are they? 3rd red flag.
Despite all the red flags we still decided to come to the 1st day of training, knowing full well that we weren't being paid like the guy had said at the interview and hitting the 70 appointment mark would be difficult. We went to training anyway. Right away he had us set up the Kirby and break it down, teaches us the script, and tells us to practice demonstrations on our groups. During the day he's telling us how to talk to the customer to get him/her to buy the Kirby. He told us some outlandish stories such as "taking a shot of the shampoo cleaner to get a sale", and "grabbing the remote off of the customers table and shutting off their TV while they were watching it" One girl in the training room immediately said "that's rude". I could see the guy wanted to snap when his response was "oh that's rude??? Excuse me you can sit there and watch tv all day you can at least give me an 2 hours of your time so i can show you this machine" Personally i think that is over-the-top rude and pushy and intrusive. You can think what you want, but i know i wouldn't ever want this guy in my house for any reason. Throughout the training he told us several selling techniques that we would need to use to play with the customers emotions in order to make the sale. Things that i would never be okay with doing such as shutting off someones tv or making them clean the house them selves, or outright lie at the front door to get into the house. He told us we had to get a minimum of 100 dirt pads and put them all over the floor and furniture and we could never have 2 pads touching to show the customer the massive amount of dirt they have by having pads everywhere. Also the customer is not allowed to touch the 100 pads during the showing, while the pads are sitting there the whole time and have dirt on them. He had told a story about how one time the customer didn't want the hundred pads all over her house so she threw them all in the trash and then he grabbed the stack of dirty dust pads out of the trash can and put them all back everywhere. We were told to tell the customer that we have to do a demonstration so that we can win a contest because "people are more likely to let you show them the Kirby if they think they are helping you to win" he also mentioned that we can say "we are doing a free carpet shampoo" in order to gain entry into a persons home. SUPRISE! In reality we are here to sell you a $3000 dollar vacuum! And we have been trained to never take no for an answer. The guy today said to keep talking about how bed-mites poop 2 pounds of crap on your mattress every year and then you will want to buy it.in fact there's a whole list of things we are supposed to read to them while they are vacuuming their own mattress as step 7 of 10 it's called: "Did You Know? A female dust mite can lay up to 50 eggs at one time, with a new generation of mites produced every three weeks! We were speciaffically instructed to bring the customers emotions up and then bring them low, then back up and then low. All of this after a cold knock and we were instructed to call the manager at the highest selling points so the manager could try and push the sale too... Once i heard all of the crazy sales tactics today i had decided that i had seen enough red flags to go ahead and check some Kirby reviews online when i get home. Thank God i did. And thank you guys for writing your stories. Me and my friends are back to looking for jobs but we'd rather be here looking for a legit company than this company that is all talk and no show, not to mention the massive amounts of complaints about everything from the employees to the product itself. At least we didn't follow through with it any longer... Im hearing some of your stories about sticking it out for a couple months and how miserable it was. Having to ask customers to go to the bathroom and use their phone. No lunch, no breaks, no commision unless the customer is paying with A-Class credit or cash or check. Just complete grunt work with no guarantee of making money whatsoever. One person on here put it pretty well: "you are their slave from Tuesday through the week-end, giving you no time to take care of personal matters. And you show up at 10am and dont go home until they tell you to, which can sometimes be as late as midnight.
Like everyone has said in their reports, i feel so bad for the poor people that are just looking for a good job. Then this silly pyramid scheme comes along and seems like the right job and destroys lives, some people on here quit their real jobs to do this and ended up writing a report like me.
And for you Kirby-Sales-Freaks, because i see your posts on this website and your responses to these victims. You think this company is the best thing that has ever happened and your filthy rich off of the grunts and pawns. You claim that Kirby has been around for 97 years and its an amazing company to work for, then why are your teams getting busted by police for illegal soliciting all he time, why don't you drug test, why do you always tell the potential employee that training is paid for, when it's really not? The list goes on and on, and those are just the employees complaints. The consumer has massive complaints about the Kirby too, the product breaks in 1 year, the customer service sucks, there's virtually no return policy/no callbacks, the sales people trick the homeowner into letting them in for a 30 minute shampoo and they end up there for 3 hours trying to sell product without licence? Of course Kirby thrives for this long, because you and your companies have figured out the biggest sale of all, stealing as much money from people, and you're good at it. You feel justified in forcing the customer against their will just a little bit, playing with their emotions, and taking as much money as possible just so you can load YOUR pockets, you even take advantage of the smaller guys such as myself looking for a decent job. That's not fair to anyone except you, so enjoy your jet skiis, and your las vegas trips. You're all a bunch of snakes to me. Except of course the good people that sell and manage the sales of the Kirby which im sure is every one of you, riiight?
You manipulate people into doing the grunt work for months so that the uppers can do nothing except close sales and make more money than the poor people doing the set-ups/break-downs/cold knocking/demonstrations. After reading multiple reviews it seems that alot of people get robbed by never getting their commissions or bumped up because its completely up to the manager to decide when and if you've earned it. Don't Work for this company, and if you gotta have one then purchase online for a flat price.
0 comments