Does Hoover even care?

[oldskoolguy]

I have had my convertible for a few years now. how i got it is another story. I looked on hoover's website for belts as I was starting to run low and thought it might be best if I ordered from the manufacturer. Given my bad experience with non-OEM parts, I wanted to get ONLY genuine hoover belts. I looked, they had none. I reached out to hoover to confirm that they no longer made the style 48 belts. And sadly I got a response saying that they were no longer available from the factory, so to see this seems like hoover may want owners of such great machines want to more or less be inconvienced. They don't make the brush sterips either, which is sort of less surprising, as I'm also told. Although you could get these OEM parts from 3rd party sellers, eventually these sellers may run out of the genuine parts, so others will have to rely on parts for their machines manufactured by 3rd parties, which may not even be as good of quality. They still make the bags for the convertible - style A. It makes no sense really that this is true i mean how much does it even cost to make a belt? It's not like you're making a new machine, which is much more expensive, so why would they discontinue the belts?

So with this in mind, I now ask: does Hoover care about their old-style machines anymore? Do they care about the people that still own these machines? Or do they now only care about people who own newer their newer machines and the machines themselves?

 

[electroluxxxx]

Instead of being a family owned company they are a corporate monster now. They only care about what's in your wallet. Kinda like capital one if you think of it. Corporate companies only care about the money they make and try to spend as little as possible so if cutting support and parts and accessories for older machines then that's what they will do to ensure that you buy a new machine. If you go to some of the older hardware stores or vac shops chances are you will find what you are looking for.

 

[pr-21]

You can still find Genuine on Ebay......


PR-21
Bud

 

[dysonman1]

Hoover doesn't care

And if you were in their shoes, you wouldn't either. What matters to any business, large or small, is the now as well as the future. Not the past. The past is over. Hoover wants all those old machines to go away - as in the landfill. It makes no business sense for Hoover to keep supporting outdated machines. They care about selling a NEW machine, TODAY. Ironically, bojack parts are now being sold as Genuine Hoover parts (bags for example).

 

[human]

It's all pretty insidious, really...

I think a lot of old line manufacturers that used to build highly durable machines are finding they're competing with their own legacy products these days; that is, they're finding it's hard to sell their new plasticrap machines when there are so many of their old, high quality machines out there. Stocking replacement parts for the legacy machines keeps them from being replaced with plasticrap and since the new machines are designed to be disposable from the git-go, there's no need to stock replacement parts for them, either.

 

[kirbysthebest]

This isn't new

And it's not just Hoover.
Whirlpool did the same thing to Kitchenaid, and Maytag when they acquired them. By failing to support the products the destined them to the dump in many cases.

Singer and Electrolux used to destroy trade ins to keep them off the secondary market, thus forcing buyers to purchase new.

 

[phaeton]

Hello All,
I bought a book that I was told about a number of years back. I had a customer that was a Steadicam Operator and he would kid me about all my old cars and thought I should read the book “Who Moved My Cheese?”. I have yet to read the book while I drive some of those old cars but I do insist there is nothing like a new safe plastic car. Oh, that also goes for vacuum cleaners too. I did good, I bought a new Whirlpool washing machine with what is called a washing plate, wow.
Thank you for looking,
Pete

 

[jessed]

The belts for the convertibles are still available. In fact, Hoover still has the convertible available for the commercial market.

The belt you are looking for is now called a Hoover lightweight commercial belt. They are now sold as singles

 

[real1shep]

Modern companies only care about their older products/customers if they can wrangle some kinda good PR out of it....which translates in a positive way to their bottom line. Way into the 90's Maytag was still making parts for even their wringer washers; if people wanted obsolescence, they, Maytag, were happy to supply them.


 


I doubt if there are big US corporations anymore with that mindset....it's all in the hands of the bean counters and the futurists.  The best you can ever hope for is that a dedicated group of enthusiasts reform a company to make old-school machines and parts to fit existing older machines....once they work past copyright, patents and trademark issues.


 


Kevin

 

[oldskoolguy]

I know I can find genuine belts on eBay, but for some reason I'm unable to find them on Hoover's website. JesseD, search on Hoover's website for "lightweight commercial belt" brought me to a v-belt for a lightweight bagged upright. Perhaps you have the convertible soft and light (a version of the elite/runabout) confused with the old convertible that is similar to sanitaire? Because the convertible takes round belts not v belts – not blaming you or anything, just saying. As for the convertible being available for the commercial market, I think that's half-true. There are plenty of online stores with models c1633-010 (bagless decade-style guardsman), c1631-010 (bagged decade-style guardsman), and c1431-010 (bagged convertible-style guardsman) still in stock despite Hoover's commercial website showing only the c1433-010 (bagless convertible-style guardsman) still available. No clue if it's just overstock or the only model being made, but it seems to be that Hoover is starting to get rid of their old machines. The conquest is now shown on Hoover's website as the c1800-010 and c1810-010 models being available, which are bagless. No idea if that's overstock either. Barely any store online, if any, has the conquest available as bagged. I once read about a rumor that production was coming back to the USA, but that was a few years back so I'm not sure if that's still true.

 

[vacuumlad1650]

You need the 44783 belt for a convertible. It replaced the 49258.

 

[kenkart]

No company gives

A DAMN anymore, Just look at any appliance on the market today, refrigerator, range, washer, dryer, or vacuum, mixer or blender,They are all CHEAP garbage, all you need to do is compare my 1959 Westinghouse range with ANY on the market...Miele , Bosch, Electrolux..etc, nothing, no matter how high priced is any where near the quality, same with small appliances,cheap, plastic!No customer service etc...And if they don't make bags and belts for older vacuums, you have to buy their new junk and replace it every few years....No thank you, I will keep my old stuff!

 

[oldskoolguy]

Not all companies don't give a damn...

Kirby takes pride in their history! They offer brush rolls, belts, outer bags, disposable bags, lights, hoses, and cords for their older models. At least for some of these items and models they used to. They'll even REBUILD (yes, REBUILD) their old models even if you aren't the original owner! They sadly are ashamed of their commercial machines though (not sure why, but I've read that they don't like talking about them). They even have their old models on their generation after generation posters (even the ezee!). Royal, i'm not sure about. Their all metal uprights have HARDLY changed since day 1, so I'm not sure if their parts for their more recent models will fit their older all metal uprights (with maybe some obvious exceptions). The day that Kirby stops giving a damn will probably the day that they die - thankfully that's not coming ANY TIME soon.

 

[kenkart]

I stand corrected...

Although I don't like the newer machines Kirby builds, I think they are too big and heavy, I agree with you, I just didn't think of Kirby, they WILL repair anything they ever made!And they still MAKE a quality product.

 

[paulg]

Not always a sinister motive

I used to work for a company that made appliances. Their attitude was that they would always carry a replacement part..... as long as there was reasonable interest in the part. It didn't have to be big orders either.
So for many of their products, we were still carrying key replacement parts twenty-five or more years later, and had no interest in stopping. This is especially true for appliances expected to last several decades (example, electric ranges).
However, when you sit behind the desk, as I did, and have to make a decision to kill a part - you have to consider that only twelve people a year request this part. In such a case we would consider the age of the appliance (let's say 25 years), how long every remaining unit would take to disappear (another ten years) and then do a final buy (we'd buy maybe 150 pieces).
And sometimes, when one of our customer would call in calling for an obsolete part - we would call our older service vendors around the country and buy the part back - and get it to you.
You would be surprised as how quickly interest in replacement parts drop off. On one product, virtually nobody requested any parts after the one year warranty expired on the last serial. Needless to say, with no reasonable requests for parts (virtually zero requests), we were not too interested in keeping too many parts in stock.
Unknown to the customer, we've had the vendors of very specific parts go bankrupt, and some burn to the ground. It isn't always practical to retool for a part that is already old. In those cases we found new-old-stock of the entire appliance - put them aside in the warehouse and saved them for emergency parts usage.
Finally, bear in mind that our service mindset was not the norm, but we did enjoy a superior service reputation.

 

[bikerray]

No, they don't.

They want to sell you a new vacuum that can't be fixed so you have to throw it away when it breaks and buy another from them.

 

[human]

Sad but true...

Yeah, once upon a time, manufacturers made things to last. The purchase price wasn't exactly cheap, based on the buying power of the dollar at the time, but you got your money's worth. The appliance was designed to last for several decades--and more importantly was designed to be serviced. For better or worse, there has been a fundamental shift in the marketplace. What were once considered 'durable goods' are now looked upon as disposable. It's the only way that manufacturers can charge the same price for the same types of appliances that they did 40 years ago without adjusting for inflation. You still get your money's worth, but your money is just worth a whole lot less. Our dollar today is worth maybe 15 or 20 cents, compared with what it would buy in the mid '70s, but people today still want to pay the same for a vacuum cleaner as they did in 1977. Back then for around $79, you could go to Sears or Kmart and get a well built Eureka or Hoover that was mostly metal and with a little TLC, it could easily still be running today. While you can still get machines with those same nameplates for the same number of dollars, they're cheap plasticrap--because they have to be.

The flip side of that coin would be Kirby. A new one with a basic toolkit would run you maybe $350 or $400 back in the '70s, depending on how adept at haggling you were. Today, a new Kirby Avalir with toolkit will run in the neighborhood of $1,500-$2,000 from a salesman. But when you adjust that price for inflation, you're really spending an equivalent amount today as you would have 40 years ago. And yes, you can get one barely used on the gray market (aka eBay or Cragislist) for the unadjusted 1977 price. An even closer 'apples to apples' analogy would be an Electrolux metal canister, which might have run you $150-$200 in the mid '70s, while a Perfect metal canister today will run you about $900-1,000.

 

[beekeyknee]

Planned obsolescence.