Total rip off (Kirby GSix Vacuum)

Member Name: pussycat

Product:	Kirby GSix Vacuum
Date:	17/07/00 (2497 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Does clean well, shampooes too, does other things if you can work out how

Disadvantages: Vastly overpriced, difficult to work out how to use other functions (how on earth do you persuade a hoover to act like a sander?)

I really wish that dooyoo had been around this time last year because then I could have read the opinions on Kirby and not buoght one! I had a very similar experience to others here. I "won" a free carpet shampoo on a scratch card that was given to me by someone knocking on the door. Two days later, I suffered the total humiliation of being shown by two smug salespeople just how dirty my home was. More than this, they insisted on hoovering my mattress and by then I would have agreed to almost anything just to get them out of the tip that is my bedroom (I'm not actually as dirty as they made out - maybe just a tad untidy!) Then they started telling my about all the other things this miracle machine will do - it will shampoo your car, strip paint, sand floorboards, etc etc. I nearly passed out when we got to the price stage but they were doing an excellent "good Kirby salesperson, bad Kirby salesperson" routine. One pointed out that the cost was less then £1 per day and wouldn't I want to pay that small price for the piece of mind of knowing that my home was really clean and that my Kirby had a lifelong warranty. The other would then sternly remind my of how many germs were living in my bed and asking me what I estimated the cost of my children's health to be - if I didn't buy the Kirby they will apparantly spontaneously develop asthma, allergies, dermetitis and a myriad of other disorders that they had not previously shown any signs of having. When I asked for time to think about it (in other words, an excuse to get them out of my house with a stern note to myself to hide behind the sofa if they ever knocked on the door again) they offered me £400 off the purchase price which sounded like so much of a bargain that I forgot that the actual price was something is excess of what I paid for my last car. All resistance was finally drained away by the sight of the one foot square of my carpet that they had actually shampooed (I
'm sure that I won a whole carpet shampoo) which was never again going to match the rest of the grubby carpet unless I bought the Kirby and shampooed it myself (it was in a place that rug would have looked silly) so I agreed to buy one and signed on the dotted line.

To be fair, it is a good hoover but so was my old one. It does shampoo the carpets but you could hire a carpet shampooer once a year for less than the cost of the replacement parts that the Kirby seems to need with every service it has. As for the other tasks it can do, I've never used it to clean my car or strip wallpaper yet - in fact, I can't work out how it would do these things. So despite its multitasking potential, all I actually have is a very expensive hoover.

Summary: