Neat Gadgets for the home

When Is A Vacuum Cleaner Not a Vacuum Cleaner?

November 30th, 2009

Many years ago, I had a job that lasted a couple weeks selling the Tri Star cleaning system. It was a vacuum cleaner but we weren’t allowed to call it that. Over and over, they told us it was a cleaning system despite the fact it was a vacuum cleaner. I learned a lot about business and a lot about vacuum cleaners from this experience.

I had my suspicions about this whole affair from the get go. The job interview took place after a 60 minute presentation given by the office manager. During that whole time, he never once told us what we would be selling.

The job interview was on a Tuesday. The next day started our three day job training for which we did not get paid. Finally on that first day, we were told what we would be selling but it wasn’t until Friday when they told us how much these things cost.

Even though they called it a cleaning system, everything we compared it to was a vacuum cleaner. We were taught how much better our cleaning system was over various vacuum cleaners. But we weren’t allowed to call it a vacuum cleaner even though it was one.

After three days of training, they finally revealed the price to us, $1999. Two thousand for a vacuum cleaner? We all thought that was nuts. But it wasn’t a vacuum cleaner. It was a cleaning system. Most of us had googled this “cleaning system” after the first day and we knew how much it cost. We weren’t surprised. We were still shocked the trainer could say it with a straight face.

The Tri-Star is a combination of vacuum technology. The air flows up the hose to a chamber in the canister. The airflow inside this canister is cyclonic like the popular Dyson machines. But it had a disposable paper basket to store the dust and dirt so it was sort of like a bagged machine. The cyclonic action kept the dust from clogging up the paper though so it had that over a traditional bagged machine. The paper dust receptacle was like a large cup so it wasn’t even closed like a bag. It was easy to dump out and re-use as many people do.

All in all, the Tri-star is a great unit if you like canister vacuums but is it worth $2000? Eh, no.

Entry Filed under: vacuum cleaners