# If I Buy A Used Kirby Vacuum



## Guest

Ok if I buy a used Kirby vacuum, is there anything I should watch out for...There's one on ebay now for around 250.00 and way up from there. Would I be much better off going to a used vacuum dealer or do you think that ebay or Craigs list would be OK. I've had good luck with purchases made on ebay, but if something goes wrong I'm kind of stuck. Thanks in advance:sing:


----------



## suzyhomemaker09

The 1st thing that pops to mind when purchasing a Kirby on E-Bay is that the shipping has to be out of this world as they are such a heavy machine.


----------



## ErinP

My mom bought her nearly-new Kirby off eBay (shipping was "free"). 
She never had any trouble. :shrug:

Personally, I'd make sure they sell this type of thing on a regular basis. Ie, refurbished, cleaned, something. Check feedback!


----------



## mscoffee

A repair place will usually give a warranty of some kind.


----------



## mosepijo

Just make sure the fins are all good. We got an old one one time that must have been used to pick up gravel because some of the fins were broke. Can still buy them from a repair place thou.


----------



## Cygnet

It might be worthwhile to hit a few thrift stores and flea markets. I paid $10 for mine, a 1987 model.  The guy at the flea market swore it worked; I figured it had $10 in parts value if it didn't. 

It did need some repairs, but this didn't amount to more than $10 more in parts.

You can get parts for them fairly inexpensively. They're made to be fixed when they break.


----------



## Guest

Thanks everyone--
I found a Kirby with all the attachments on Craigs list for my daughter-she picked it up last week and I borrowed it today-
WOW-how did I ever think I was getting anything clean with before???? I went and got myself one on ebay and it should be here next week-I live just over an hour from my daughter so we sure can't keep lugging that thing back and forth.
Thanks for your advise-I consider it money well spent.


----------



## ErinP

A close friend of ours tried to sell Kirbys for about a year or so... (Just a year or two before eBay made the door-to-door price irrelevant, actually.) He was a lousy salesman, but he still managed to unload a few. 
He pointed out that the demo sold the machine, especially in a fastidious home, where it wasn't so obvious how much was already being missed. 

To this day, he swears that of the literally hundreds of homes that he was in, where they got to vacuum carefully, and he just came along and made a single pass behind, he _never_ saw a machine he couldn't pick up after. 
Just before he got out of it, he got one for he and his wife, us, his folks, and all of his brothers for cost.


----------



## FB.Ironworker

we own a kirby. it's the only one that out lived 4 or 5 other vacs. bags are only available at the kirby fixin sellin store. guess you can buy off the internet, but in my area only the kirby store has them. pretty good vacs, cost 1k. something like a kirby 2000 i think.


----------



## diamondtim

I have two older Kirbys that I purchased at estate sales. One for $10 and the other for $5. The first one takes Kirby bags and the other one was retrofitted by a vacuum repair place to accept generic Eureka bags (top fill with a paper tube). Some of the older models have a bag with a trapdoor that you unload over a garbage can (can be messy the first few times).

I've been sold on Kirbys for over 30 years. We used them at a cleaning service I worked for in college. Really tough machines!


----------

