I know e-commerce is convenient but recent experience has made me question where society is going, now that distance buying and selling has become the norm. Recently bought a relatively expensive cordless vacuum (140€) on Jeff’s site. Went down the usual rabbit hole of review reading and chose the one with the best reviews.
Once received, I realised that it wasn’t going to be man enough to replace our heavy Henry that we both object to lugging up and down the stairs. The machine, whilst adequate for light duties has a general feeling of fragility and is unlikely to reach the 10 years age of our Henry , so I left a review reflecting my experience.
Lo and behold, I get contacted directly by the company requesting that if I change or remove my review, they will send a better, more powerful hoover foc and I can keep the other one. Googling this, it seems the norm for Chinese suppliers to do this, despite it contravening all rules. How on earth can you trust reviews of anything on that basis?
Just received new discs and Pads for my car from Auto doc because the Valeo ( Citroen supplier brand) ones I fitted just 25,000km ago from Mr Auto ( part of Stelantis) have worn the discs already down to the minimum thickness.
Opening the Febi Bilstein ( another decent car part brand) box of pads, one has a manufacturing flaw and this, was reported to auto doc along with photos as requested. I have now waited longer for my refund and replacement than it took for the original order to arrive and will now be forced to drive with worn brake discs.
After 2 weeks, I have still not had a response from Mister Auto about the poor quality of the parts they supplied. The previous discs/pads fitted new on the car lasted 75,000 km!
It was so much easier with real physical shops!
Which is why that’s what I stick to in the main. Very little is so urgent that it can’t wait until we go somewhere convenient for a specific shop
The quality of both 3rd party and OEM car spares have gone down the pan in recent years, so I’m happy to let my garagiste fit the brands he thinks will do the job as he’ll be replacing them if they fall short.
I agree that the 6 litre is a chunky boy, but I’ve never found anything cordless or bag less to match its cleaning power. You can also give the HEPA filter a good dosing of room freshener to mitigate sucking up any shield/stink bugs.
Ours is like trigger’s broom. Still going but many parts replaced or repaired. Never been quite the same since hoovering up live coals round the wood burner ( not me!)
I’ve realised after buying a couple of small vacuum cleaners that were totally inadequate sucking power and sending them back, that the fault may be in newish EU regulations that severely restricted sucking power.
I’m hanging onto my Henry for dear life now as the Henry pre-dates those regs while I try to find out if the UK also implemented those regulations that seem to have emasculated vacuum cleaners.
If the UK is still making actual vacuum cleaners with suck unlike the EU then I’ll import one
Sadly , I remember the UK also adopting the reduction in allowable KW of vacuum cleaners. It’s a bit like having a toilet that flushes less water to save water but you have to flush it twice to be effective
Vacuum cleaners were perfectly ok but they had to mess with them.
The answer is to buy a Karcher shopvac. Lightweight, super sucky, and copes easily with all the muck of both the garage and workshop floors. One slight drawback is that it only has a 4 metre long power cable.
My EU model Henry Compact (6 litre) is 620W, but has way more effective suction power than the Dyson DC42 1100W bag less upright that came to France with us.
Both are way better than the Shark bagless upright we tried a few years ago.
This has been our similar experience. Henry keeps on working, despite being heavy, noisy, and a little cumbersome in tight spaces, but he beats the pants off our Xiaomi battery powered stick, and our more recently acquired Shark liquid vac, which requires dismantling and part cleaning after nearly every outing.
The problem now is I want to buy a 12000 btu portable air con unit for next summer and they are all chinese on Amazon and the reviews are generally good.
I just don’t believe the reviews any more.
I am thinking of spending twice as much and buying one from a proper shop
We always buy from a proper shop. So much easier to get things installed, taken away, repaired. And all with goodwill. Essential when running a gite.
Returning it might be easier, but will it really be made in a different factory?
Some will, but many will be from those Chinese factories. And of those “made in the EU”, they will be full of Chinese components.
Yes, I bought an Italian branded scythe cutter on line from Agrieuro and that has a Chinese Loncin engine and the handle mechanism broke virtually from new. I’m pretty sure the company is mafia connected as the 3 year warranty was worthless. After weeks of emails and unable to cut the hay, I resorted to welding the thing up myself. At least with Amazon you can return defective goods easily
Hopefully, you don’t need to lug a 12,000 BTU PAC up or down stairs as my 10,500 BTU one weighs 30kg and I wouldn’t want to be dragging that up even a short flight of stairs on a regular basis.
We just need one downstairs for some respite in the heat during the day. Night time upstairs, we just open all the windows
My bedroom is on the same floor as the living room, so I just roll the PAC between rooms.
I did pick up a second 6,500 BTU unit for the office/guest room upstairs when BUT had a sale on Beko PACs. Much lighter, but not very quiet.