Kirby Aka Golden Circle Kirby.... a scam to avoid... both as customer and employee Southington Connecticut

I only worked for this Kirby branch for one day, and that was all I needed to see to determine that this company is a scam, which is unfortunate because for the most part they make a decent product. I'll share with you the red flags I saw and you can make your own conclusions:

1) I contacted the company through an ad in the newspaper which said "make $475 - 675 per week" and "no experience necessary". The ad did NOT include either the name of the company or a specific description of the job being applied for. Kirby claims it's because if they put an ad in the paper saying its a vacuum cleaner salesman position no one would apply. Nonsense! I'm sure lots a people wouldn't mind being a salesman. I didn't mind. Either way, it's a con to get people in the door.

2) I came in for an interview at 5:45pm on Tuesday and was "hired" over the phone 10:00am the next day. I've never been hired so fast in my life. There's no way they had time to check any of my references, previous employment, or do a simple background check. Real high standards they have huh?

I bet that's a nice little shock to those of you who've had a Kirby salesman in your house. You could have let in a convicted felon and not even known it.

Also what they don't tell you (unless you yourself ask) is that you're not really hired because you're not an employee. You're an independent contractor, which is fine, but they should be upfront about that.

3) In the first day of training (which is not paid for) you're given a "reference sheet" that is supposedly for "emergency use only". Well which is it.. a reference sheet or an emergency contact sheet? The sheet asked for the name, phone number, and address of your parents and then 5 other people! Again nonsense!! It is simply a way to get the personal information of your friends and family to add to the Kirby telemarketers list of people to call and harass.

4) The main sign to the building said "Golden Circle" with a "Kirby" sign much smaller beneath it. All the paperwork I came across said Golden Circle on it. And, for "training purposes" we were told to set up in home sales demo with family and friends, but we weren't supposed to mention the name Kirby. We were only supposed to say we were with Golden Circle. Apparently this scam has been around so long, people are getting wind of it so each branch changes it's name to something different.

5) My first and only day of training was four hours long without any kind of break!!! Four straight hours! Anyone who has studied group psychology will tell you that this is a common tactic used by cults and scam artists to make there subjects more complient. Think about it, if you're sitting on a bladder ready to burst you're going to swallow whatever you're given just to get out of there as quickly as possible. Incidentally, I got up and went to the bathroom whenever I d*mn well pleased and BTW there bathroom was poorly lit and filthy!!

6) After the scam alert started going off in my head, I began looking around ...really looking around and noticed more red flags such as the "Now Hiring" sign was PERMANENTLY stenciled onto the glass above the front door. Gee guys....high turnover much?

7) Also during training we were encouraged to travel to our sales appointments in the group van instead of our personal vehicles. Every time I asked if we would be reimbursed for mileage I was told "oh I'll get to that later" (We never did get around to discussing mileage...big surprise huh?) On my way out the door that day I took a look at the vans. They were dented, rusted out, 20 year old pieces of sh*t with the cheapest HomeDepot peel and stick stenciling on the side to spell out the name of the company. If these guy are rolling in cash like they claim (and like they claim you will be too) why aren't they investing some of that money back into there vehicles? Wouldn't any legit company want to make the best impression possible?

And ..oh yeah..lets go into detail about the van concept. They were going to take half a dozen pretty young girls (as most of the people in training that day were pretty young girls) drop them off ALONE at a strangers house and then LEAVE THEM THERE stranded until the van finished dropping off the other girls. Shear genious guys...bravo. But thats the point..they don't care about there "contractors". The use them as much as they use their customers.

That night I went home and my instincts told me to investigate further. Thus I stumbled onto this website. What I read sinched it for me that Kirby is indeed a scam.

Anyway, I went back the next day just to confront the head brainwashing guy from the previous days training. When I confronted him with my concerns, all of a sudden the flashy smile went away and he began fidgeting with his suit. He assured me that no one had ever been hurt or threatened at an appointment. And, when I mentioned what I had read off this website the previous night, he pulled out the same EXACT EXCUSES that I had read off the "employee rebuttals" from this very site... "Don't listen to those people online. They are just lazy. If they had put in the effort, they would have succeeded." These scam artists know about this site and are attempting to redeem themselves...DON'T LISTEN!!! Go ahead Kirby con men....rebut this ripoff Report if you dare!

Katherine
Waterbury, Connecticut
U.S.A.

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