Downgrade VEM of cisco nexus 1000v

We have to sometimes downgrade or upgrade VEM vib packages on esxi hosts for the cisco n1k (1000v) and what we have noticed is that the damn thing won't let you do it. If it is a downgrade obviously you have to remove the old one and to do that you have to make sure that the related services aren't running.
#check vem status
vem status

#stop vem service if it is running
vem stop

#check vem status again to make sure it is not running
vem status

#kill that damn vem service if it is still running
#find the PID of the service
lsof | grep vem
#use the typical linux command to kill it using it's PID
kill -9 "vem PID"

#find the vem package which needs to be removed
esxcli software vib list | grep -i "vem"
or
esxcli software vib list | grep -i "cisco-vem"

#remove the vem vib package
esxcli software vib remove --vibname=cisco-vem-yyyy-esx