Vacuum cleaners - an unsolicited reviewvertorial

The Sears household has a chequered history with vacuum cleaners.  I remember splashing out on one a while ago which I recall being rather expensive, but I thought "Well, it's worth getting a good one, it will be a well-designed joy to operate and last much longer, and Jackie likes it (in the shop) so everyone will be happy in the long run".  It was a tow-along style, featuring switchable power settings (rather than a cheap but annoying slider gizmo to let some extra air in, which,  in my experience, always gets opened accidentally and spoils the max. suction I almost always want).  Somewhat bizarrely though, it had an ultrasonic connection between control (on the handle) and the main body.  This worked OK unless you towed it along round a corner, and then the off-switch didn't work, until it got line-of-sight to the body again.  It wasn't excessively noisy though, and I quite liked it, so I was a bit miffed when I found that it had suddenly been replaced by a VAX jobby.  Even worse, the old one had been mysteriously "disappeared", despite still being in good working order.  Can you imagine the effect on my delicate psyche?

The VAX turned out to have with a few irritating features.  Most irritating was a big, foot-operated on-off switch than you had to press exactly squarely, exactly in the middle or it didn't work.  Also, it was very noisy indeed.  And the dust emptying process didn't work very well, leaving a big clod of stuff stuck in the transparent cylinder; if you tried to shake it out whilst holding the handle, the whole thing fell apart and into the bin.

Worst of all, it didn't actually work very well on our wooden floors, preferring to slide the bits of stuff around in front of itself, rather than vacuum them up.  And so it had to go.

This time the House of Luuurve came to the rescue, by providing us with the opportunity to try out their recently-acquired VTech cordless units.  Yes, you need two, because one is only an upright floor cleaner, and the other is a hand-held with all those little brush and nozzle attachments you need.  And how wonderful they are.  The lack of mains lead is indeed a joy, the performance is exceptionally good, and the upright has a gizmo for emptying the dust collector which really works.  You unclip the part, put it over the bin, open the bottom and slide the magic slider gizmo; the crud falls neatly out, and that's it.  Great!  Still a little bit noisy, but overall, jolly good. So we bought ourselves a pair.

GTech hand-held - mmmmm!

Sadly, the first time Jackie used the hand-held, she dropped it.  The main nozzle/snood thingy attaches with a locking sleeve (green)which unlocks by pulling it away from the body.  Unfortunately this means that it you inadvertently grab the thing by the sleeve whilst trying to attach a brush (or something), the weight of the body itself causes it to unclip and drop off.  Even more sadly, this happened while she was standing on the back of the sofa, attending to the previously little-cleaned pelmet of the patio doors.  The drop given was six feet, and the the result was almost fatal - mostly it wouldn't switch on, then it wouldn't switch off.  Bugger.

Wishing to minimise the distress that this sorry episode was causing, we phoned up VTech to see whether they would take it in for repair.  Instead, they diagnosed on the phone that the switch module had probably broken, and offered to send us a new one, free of charge.  Excellent!

When it arrived, sadly it didn't fix the problem.  Bugger again.  Back on the phone - and this time VTech offered a complete new chassis, next day delivery - which would be Sunday.  Still no charge - doubly excellent!

The chassis arrived as expected, but by this time the battery was flat and it wouldn't charge in either chassis.  We went back to the House of Luuurve to experiment using their one, and confirmed that our only remaining problem was that our battery was now defunct.  Guess what?   VTech sent us a new one - free of charge.  And collected all the old bits.  And so, we are restored, and happily cleaning the parts our previous vacuums couldn't reach.  Awesome.

This level of customer service is peculiar to new companies trying to establish a reputation, and it doesn't last forever.  Eventually the competition gets stiffer, the margins get thinner, the bean-counters take over, and all that remains is an internet forum where customers can moan to each other.  But it is a joy while it lasts.  Buy a VTech today!