I was looking through items on Ebay and came across a mattress cleaning system using the Kirby Ultimate G as a part of the system. The item on Ebay is a complete kit to get someone started in a home based business cleaning mattresses. I was just wondering if anyone had any experience or thoughts on it. The price of the kit is quite high and I just wonder how many people would pay to have their mattress cleaned.

I remember a discussion of this item on Vacuumland or was it Applianceville-on this unit.Way overpriced for what it is.No-I will just clean my mattress with my own Kirby cleaner-other vacuums work ,too.When I used to do demos with Tri-Star vacuums-you would offer to clean the customers mattress with the vacuum and use the darl colored dirt pad to show the skin flakes and dead dust mites in their mattress-if you were lucky-you could see some LIVE dust mites in there-the "dirt" on the dirt pad is moving!Just about any DTD vacuum salesperson does the Matteress cleaning demo.

Bah dustmites are cute lil critturs anyway, just think of em as midget spiders.

I would think the dust mites could actually be useful--they eat the dead skin flakes that come off your body every day.Its said some matteresses could contain 10 pounds of them!A pillow could have 2 pounds of them in it.Remember this from vacuum cleaner demo doco-something to "scare" the customer-I guess scare him into vacuuming his matteress with YOUR vacuum you are selling!

I have a good mind to, if (god forbid) the Kirby man comes a calling to bring out my Heritage 2 when he asks to see my old Vacuum Cleaner.

yeah, that'll stump him...

hello!

Yes, we have a similar firm in Germany: Potema.
I remember having seen their "work kit" at a friend's house: a big toolcase containing a Kirby G4 with an altered brushroll nozzle, small handle and bag, the Kirby demo cloth with tube and snap rings, some weird chemical "test strip" laboratory box and a set of matress stickers: "hygenically clean, next check at ... (enter date here)"

The nozzle had a UV light tube in front of it "to kill germs" and an usage hours counter (to count the mileage of the machine). It took the power for the UV tube from the socket of the (removed) headlight.

my friend was quite angry when I told him, my complete Kirby was 2500,- DM (at that time) while he paid some 10,000,- DM for the basic unit alone from Potema.

Also: rumor has it that Kirby now refuses to sell newer models to the Potema franchise firm and that there was some legal proceedings as well (not confirmed, though).

I think it is basically the same concept: You buy the kit to "build your own business", you go to people's houses, vacuum their matress for 20 min and put that "ok clean" sticker on it, returning next month or so.
While Potema was strong in the 80ies, they now have to push their "mites killer spray" on homeshopping TV of Europe.

See their page on that link.

Cheers, Joe