Tip of the Day: How to handle door-to-door vacuum-sales reps

In an era when you can buy just about anything with the click of a mouse, door-to-door sales of vacuums seem a quaint anachronism.

But don't be fooled by that image. Door-to-door vacuum sales are big business, with sales reps from Kirby Company moving about $400 million worth of merchandise last year alone. Kirby sells its vacuums to 600 independent distributors nationwide, whose nearly 10,000 sales representatives do in-home demonstrations.

Cleveland-based Kirby sells one model, updating it about every two years. The Kirby Sentria upright (shown; model information is available to subscribers) excelled at cleaning carpets and bare floors in our latest tests and rates very good overall. Kirby is also among the more reliable brands of upright vacuums in our surveys. The MSRP is $1,350, although the distributor has the final word on price.

Kirby's sales methods don't always have the same solid reputation as its vacuums. A Web search will yield many pages filled with stories from disgruntled people about Kirby and alleged scams.

Kirby must be aware of all the chatter—its customer-service policy states that over the last 10 years the manufacturer has adopted a culture of continuous improvement in customer service. The company also requires distributors to sign a contract agreeing to operate legally and ethically. "We can't control every step of the distributor's business, but we have the ultimate power in whether we do business with them," says Rob Shumay, a Kirby spokesman.

"Kirby is extremely interested in customer service. However, not all of its distributors are cut from the same cloth," says Sandra Prebil, a spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau in Cleveland. "One, two, or three distributors will be really bad. We know that Kirby has stopped shipment to a bad distributor and the company will make good on an order for a distributor who's disappeared. For Kirby, trying to control so many different people is difficult."

Wanting to evaluate the Kirby experience myself, I arranged for an in-home demo through the Kirby Web site. I also called a local rep I found in my yellow pages. In neither case did I identify myself as a Consumer Reports employee. I didn't go into this process intending to buy a new vacuum; I also had an in-home demo from Rainbow, another vacuum company.

Within an hour of the phone call, a Kirby sales rep was at my door. The vacuum she showed me was impressive. And pricey: She quoted me a price of $1,755. Of course, she noted, I could finance the vacuum—over 18 months at a 28 percent annual interest rate, for a total cost of $2,219.

The experience was not unpleasant and the sales rep did not pressure me to buy, though she did linger at my house for 2 hours after the demonstration ended, waiting for her boss to pick her up.

A week later I got a call from another distributor who had received my online demo request. When I told the distributor I'd already had a demo and informed him of the earlier quote, he offered me the same model for only $900, claiming his overhead was lower.

The price seemed too good to turn down.  I wondered whether the distributor was selling me a used model. Sales reps can resell vacuums that have been returned to the distributor. The distributor is required to disclose to customers whether a vacuum has been returned or refurbished. Such vacuums should have a different warranty card from new models, according to Shumay.

While my experiences might differ from those of other Kirby customers, they can provide you with some useful advice to follow the next time you set up an in-home demonstration or when a door-to-door sales rep from any company calls or unexpectedly shows up at your door:

• If a sales rep calls and says you've won a prize you'll receive during an in-home demonstration, hang up immediately. The call is probably a scam to get the huckster's foot in the door.

• Before you agree to a demonstration with a company, learn about the distributor by checking it out through your local Better Business Bureau.

• Don't fall for sneaky sales tactics. These include the sales rep leaving a vacuum with you for a few days, as happened when a Rainbow rep said he didn't feel like putting it back in the box at the end of his demo. Another sketchy move is when the rep tries to get you on the phone with his sales manager.

• Before you sign any deal, verify that a vacuum is new by calling the manufacturer's customer-service department and checking the serial number.

• Use the manufacturer's suggested price listed in our ratings as a reference. To get the best deal, buy on a Friday or at the end of the month—sales reps have goals to meet and might be more flexible on pricing at those times.

• Carefully calculate the interest rate on any payment plan. Some rates are exorbitant.

• Ask about the cancellation policy. For example, Kirby gives customers age 67 and older 1 year to return the vacuum. Younger customers have only three business days.

• Don't let your parents be duped. The elderly are often targets of unscrupulous sales reps, but are embarrassed to admit it. So alert them to potential scams.—Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Read our latest report on vacuums to find standout models. Ratings of canisters, uprights, and small vacuums are available to subscribers.