Three Hours and 180 Miles

On Friday, I will be driving over to Sarasota and returning the @#$%@$@%@$ Kirby. I explained to the company manager that Jane is incapable of standing and doing her dishes, do you honestly think she's going to be able to push a vacuum?

She asked if it was obvious that Jane might have clouded judgment to the average person. I said to our lawyer, yes, but the average person, not so much. I would think that the fact that the woman used a walker to get to the front door and is tethered to an oxygen machine wouldn't really be able to use their product might cause them to think twice about selling the product to Jane or any other disabled individual. I mentioned that Jane's DPoA is sitting at the lawyer's office, ready to go, that we felt that it could wait until she was in assisted living to activate- but I could change my mind and do it now.

After a few minutes on the phone, she said she would call Jane to verify what I had told her. She did, asking Jane why she purchased it if she wasn't happy with the item.

Let us count the ways shall we?
-The young lady that came to the door said she was a new employee of Kirby and was participating in a contest to clean the most floors.
-Next, a guy did the demonstration and hard sell. He told Jane that it would clean up the cat fur, and that opened the door to Jane thinking it might help with the allergy situation for me and Game Teen
-They were there for THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Jane gets tired easily, so to have strangers in her home for that length of time is just insane. They pushed her past the point of exhaustion and circled like vultures.

A few months back, similar people tried the same tactic on me. A young lady came knocking on the door, offering a free shampooing of my living room. I said I was NOT interested. Ed was really annoyed, because the rug does need to be shampooed.

I explained what the shill was, and he told me how they shampooed his mom's rug. Part of me wonders if this was the same outfit and they came back around when Jane didn't have Mom to say NO anymore.

Sorry, my mindset is if you have to come door to door to sell your product, it is not worth owning (except Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout popcorn, that is). There is no recourse if something goes wrong. How do I get the thing fixed if it breaks? Where do I return it if someone came door to door? There was a time when reputable companies went door to door (Fuller Brush, anyone?), but those days are gone.

The extremely quick search of Kirby Vacuums Sarasota found the company (Pivitol, Inc.) and several reviews. Curiously, any site that had actual consumer reviews, all of them were one out of five stars, but despite the fact that they were CONSUMER review sites, employees would also post ratings of FIVE stars and the comment "This is SUCH a great place to work. I love it here." or something of that ilk.

The worst part of all? The list price on the vacuum is 999.00 when you search online. If you look at yesterday's pictures, the list price Mike the salesperson printed is 2399.00, but he was giving Jane the bargain price of 1299-still a full 300 bucks over LIST PRICE.

Oh, and I was curious about what I'd find in the bag. Would it have more than Jiminy and Scamp fur and gray carpet threads? I was going to open it up and see-but that bag is FULL. It supposedly vacuumed one stuffed with furniture 15x15 room. There is no way that the bag should be full.

I'm prepared to do battle. I was told it could be returned after being made to feel like I was making them lose money because they already paid the commission. The manager told me I could ship it back or bring it to Sarasota. I don't trust them if I send it back, so I will be spending a chunk of time earmarked for doing a midterm project and driving the thing over.

If someone complains that it has been used and wants to charge Jane for a 'restocking fee', I'm going to insist they cut open the bag. The full bag, even though the thing supposedly has only been used on Jane's carpet. I'll even bring samples of each cat's fur and the carpet fibers. If that bag has different colors or types of animal hair, they're going to be really sorry they even breathed a word of restocking fees.

The frustrating thing about it is that now I worry about what scam artist is going to knock on her door next...

Help!

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