Kerbie Goes Bananas

Yesterday I got a call from Kerbie of Concord. Apparently my dear friend Sarah Hipple had a complimentary carpet cleaning from them last week and signed me up for a gift certificate, bless her heart. Our floors and rug are embarassing, and since Peter was supposed to be out of town, I figured what the hey. I could handle someone cleaning my floors for an hour while I and fed the kids dinner. It was supposed to rain. It almost sounded like fun. Courtney arrived shortly before we did around 5. It took her a good 15 minutes to assemble the vacuum which took up the better part of our kitchen. She started off by handing me a basket of carpet cleaning solutions saying, "This is a gift from you to me." That's when I knew I was in trouble. I plugged the kids in to PBS and made dinner while she showed me every possible feature and function on a machine that looked right out of the 1950s. She took her job of training me on this state of the art device very seriously, providing helpful mneumonic devices such as "Green to Green your ready to Go," and "We call this the bird, and this is the bird's perch." I oohed and ahhed at appropriate moments while wondering when she was going to start shampooing my carpet. Before she got to the carpet, she wanted to vacuum the stairs, the mattress upstairs, the living room rug. I fed the kids, read them books, brushed teeth, put them to bed. At 9 pm she was still in my house and hadn't buffed the hardwood floors yet (which is what I was REALLY looking forward to). At around 8 pm she had begun the pitch. She showed me an extensive spreadsheet with features and costs and payment plans. Every few minutes she called her supervisor to "check in," at which point the supervisor would instruct her to offer me another price. The bottom line: $1,500. But I could put down $120 today and set up a payment plan at $70/ month... for two years. "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" I wanted to laugh. Instead I explained to her that my husband was out of work (partially true) and there was no way I would ever consider buying such a vacuum cleaner, thank you very much. Now could you get to the hardwood floors? At 9:25 the supervisor called back to make another pitch and I asked for the phone. I told her that I would never under any circumstances pay that much money for a vacuum cleaner and that the nice young lady had been in my house for over four hours and enough was enough. Let her leave my house NOW and no way am I giving you the names of ten of my friends (at around 6 pm I had filled out a list, still thinking this was a cool deal). Courtey left after many apologies. My hardwood floors are still a mess.

The lesson: There is no such thing as a free demo.