"The most informative vacuum cleaner source on the net..."1 800 479 VACS (8227)
"The most informative vacuum cleaner source on the net..."By Ron Pastore
The article is strictly about our opinion, as 29 year vacuum industry repair professionals, of Consumer Report's appliance testing. We do not claim to have any affiliation with them, nor with their rating system. Reporting on Consumer Reports' findings is a violation of copyright law, so we legally can't mention the details of their results. Though under our First Amendment rights as American's we feel we have the right to mention them by name in the following article.
The reason we are writing this article is because of the length in which our customers have trusted the Consumer Reports' findings, and our opinion of the validity of those findings. As we started looking towards other industries, we found many professionals to have similar concerns about the results of this consumer organization. Detroit News reported that the average number of survey cards filled in and sent back to Consumer Reports for one of the most popular categories(Automobiles) is 480,000, out of over 4 million sent. Given the fact that the majority of American families have at least two cars, this is a response rate of 6% in one of the most popular categories. In addition, I think most people would agree, that when a response rate is that low, any proper testing organization should then calculate the personality profiles of the 'type of people who actually fill out those cards' into their results. Although I'm sure consumer reports has a lot of talented and good hearted people working there, I find much of their system to be worth questioning, and through vacuum cleaners, i will show you why.
When it comes to vacuums, we would really like to know why some of the top rated machines are ones that we have seen to be the most unreliable, easily clogged, and easily broken. We find that overall, time and time again, they do not please customers. We also find a lot of professionals who agree when it comes to many of the other Consumer Report categories, they just don't add up. We have been fixing vacuum cleaners, all day long, every day(except sunday) for 30 years. We know what parts on what machines will break and within what time period. Every year we go and see the new models, how they work, their pricing, and what major stores will carry them. Every machines has both good and bad points, our primary goal as a store is to match the right vacuum with the right person for the amount they want to spend, and the only way to do that is to know these machines inside and out. There is a brutal fact about many of the appliance industries in this country that most people don't seem to realize. The vast majority of the products you see in the big department stores are specially designed to break within a certain time window. Coincidently, in that period will be the discontinuing of the essential replacement parts, and the lowering of prices of the original product. After years of research, these companies have started to realize that by pushing the public towards buying cheaper appliances more frequently, they will make a lot more money. While the public thinks they are saving, they are most definitely spending more money. With today's technology products actually can be easily manufactured to last a very long time, and they don't need to be a small fortune either. There are vacuums below 200$ that will last an average of 10 years given they are taken care of properly. If you live in Germany, when you buy an appliance, you will most likely have it for the next 30 years. It used to be that way in the United States before the birth of this new breed of engineering mixed with marketing, called 'planned obsoletion'. Planned obsoletion is a direct result of consumer support of the 'big box' mega stores. As competition between these large stores increases, so does the need to have lower prices. This is natural with all competition but when it comes to appliances, the end result is there is less room on the shelf for things that will last a long time because they don't move quickly enough. Strongly built, and innovative products are still being made and endorsed by industry professionals, but more and more they can only be bought on the net through specialty online shops such as this one.
A big push towards planned obsoletion in the vacuum cleaner industry is the current trend of bagless vacuums. For those of you who are in your 50's or older, you might remember the vacuum cleaner industry tried this about 30 years ago. Even back then when these machines were metal and much stronger people were still displeased. Any unbiased vacuum cleaner industry professional/technician will tell you that bagless vacuums are far inferior. They are advertised as less hassle because of the 'no bag', but instead you have an array of filters that need to be cleaned and replaced, which are actually more expensive then bags and provide a fraction of the filtration. These are not sealed vacuum units, and will kick the majority of the smaller particles/allergens either back into the air (ever sneeze while vacuuming?), or they will go into the inner workings of the motor and quickly lower the performance of the machine until it dies, usually about 2-3 years time. Now wouldn't it seem that a consumer organization who's self proclaimed mission is to "test, inform and protect" would be aware of this trend towards planned obsoletion through bagless machines? I would think they would catch wind of it at some point in time, but it's funny how the vast majority of the products they test and inform us about are products that lay within this 'bottom line' based corporate agenda. There are well over 400 vacuum cleaner models available on the market in the United States at any given time, 1/3 which are some great machines (the ones most honest vacuum stores will try and carry), yet consumer reports is only willing to test about 30-40 of the most poorly engineered machines, a majority bagless? Coincidently these are the machines that you will only find in all the big box stores like Target, Walmart, Home Depot, etc... You won't find them much in the smaller vacuum stores that would actually have to deal with the customer response to these poor products.
Consumer Reports does actually do some very useful tests when determining their results, but not enough to give you the whole scope of the product. Some of the factors we take into account when summing up our opinion of a vacuum cleaner is it's life expectancy, weight, storage ability, ease of push, animal hair removal, filtration, odor resistance, ability to clean carpets, bare floors and fringed rugs. Due to the length of their testing process they can not test for life expectancy, which is what we think most people look for in a vacuum. Also, the majority of these performance aspects in many of these low quality machines will change drastically after only a month or so of usage. Which gives the public a situation where the biggest appliance companies are specifically designing their products to fair well with consumer reports, knowing they will work great out of the box, but as a very short period of times goes by, all the levels of performance will degrade very quickly. We believe a great vacuum cleaner, or any product for that matter should perform it's best for the majority of the lifetime of a product. We find very few vacuum cleaners on the consumer report list that do so.
Why is Consumer Reports, who is supposedly devoted to the consumer, avoiding the best products?