Your home is meant to be a sanctuary, a place where you can close your front door, shut out the world, and feel at peace. Sometimes, though, you can be ambushed in your own castle by someone selling their particular brand of religion, literal or figurative.
One elderly couple basically had their door broken down one night by a pair of Kirby vacuum cleaner salespeople. The more the old folks said they weren’t interested, the pushier the salespeople became, until the couple’s grandkid finally had to step in.
More info: Reddit
Your home is meant to be your sanctuary, but for this elderly couple, it became a hotbed of pushy sales tactics
Image credits: Burntout22 / Reddit
A pair of insistent Kirby vacuum cleaner salespeople showed up at their door one night and basically barged their way inside
Image credits: Addictive Stock / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The salespeople spent the next two and a half hours “demonstrating” their equipment to the old folks, who were at their wits’ end by now
Image credits: tiko33 / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The couple’s grandkid, overhearing all the fuss from another room, Googled the company and found someone on TikTok claiming they were a scam
Image credits: Burntout22
Confronted with proof of their scam, one of the salespeople tried to grab the grandkid’s phone to stop playing the TikTok, so they told them to get lost or face the cops
At 8 p.m. sharp, two Kirby vacuum salespeople barged into OP’s grandparents’ home, promising a “quick 15-minute demo.” The problem? The house didn’t even have carpets, only hardwood floors. Yet, two and a half hours later, the elderly pair’s living room was covered in pads and vacuum parts, and the couple still couldn’t get rid of them.
The salespeople leaned hard on shady tactics. First came the promise of a “Bahamas trip” they just had to win by doing one more demo. Then came the fearmongering: “falling off a step stool could cost more than this vacuum.” Using imagined hospital bills to pressure seniors? Bold move, though not exactly ethical.
That’s when OP stepped in. Armed with TikTok evidence exposing the exact same Bahamas scam, they confronted the pushy duo. But instead of leaving, the so-called boss arrived, tried grabbing the phone out of OP’s hands, and even attempted to turn off the video herself. The persistence was almost cartoonish.
Even after being told to leave, the boss lady trailed OP’s grandfather into the kitchen, still trying to score a signature. When that failed, she bizarrely asked for paper towels. Finally, the salespeople left, still tossing out awkward “stay safe” wishes as if nothing had happened. If audacity were currency, these Kirby scum would be billionaires.
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
From what OP tells us in their post, the Kirby salespeople were as pushy as they come. If they hadn’t been there to step in, their grandparents would likely have become one more pair of casualties in the door-to-door salesmen war. Why do these scum target the elderly, though? And what can be done to stop them? We went looking for answers.
According to the Nunis Law website, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) indicates that older Americans lose billions of dollars annually to financial exploitation. The financial toll is estimated to be around $3 billion per year, though experts believe the true cost could be much higher due to under-reporting.
Sales reps who prey on seniors often employ various manipulative tactics, including creating a false sense of urgency, targeting cognitive impairment, using complex language and financial or technical jargon, exploiting trust, and running bogus promotions. In short – seniors are a soft target and these door-to-door hucksters know it.
In her article for TrustDALE, Jessica Long writes that you have legal, civil, and creative options that can help cut down on, or even stop, unwanted knocks on your door. For example, you could check local solicitation laws and permit rules, document and file a complaint, use clear signage with legal wording, or opt out with service providers.
If you ask us, OP could still go some way to see to it that the entitled Kirby folks learn their lesson. Naming and shaming Kirby on social media could be one way to go, but a formal complaint is also definitely overdue.
What would you have done if you’d found yourself in OP’s shoes? Have you got your own door-to-door sales horror story? Let us know in the comments!
In the comments, readers slammed the dodgy salespeople, and one suggested the person complain to the Kirby head office as well as on their social media pages
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