gmerkt
New member
The other day I was killing time in a pawnshop, and noticed a vacuum that I hadn't seen before. In fact, they had two of them in stock. It was called "H2O Vac Turbo" and IIRC was marked on the bottom "TC Products" or something like that. There were other rating markings on the decal, but no country of origin. Off to one side of the decal, molded in the plastic body it said "Made in China": which was (to me) an obvious attempt to disguise where it was made. As if you couldn't tell be looking at it.
The whole pitch behind this machine of course is the water filtration gimmick. I decided to prowl around online to see if I could find any information on these. It seems that this machine is sold via informercials and online sales. There are several versions of it, marketed by different companies. Here's a link to the Amazon.com version:
http://www.amazon.com/Turbo-Filtration-System-Vacuum-Cleaner/dp/B001MEZN5K
You can look through the customer reviews; some good, some bad, many happy people who don't know the difference between a good vac and a bad one. On other sites, "Should I buy this one or a Euro Pro?" type comments. One of the results of American consumers being overwhelmed with a tidal wave of cheap (in all senses) Chinese products is that after while, they aren't able to descern quality from crap. When it's all crap, what is there to compare to? The phrase, "Built to Last a Lifetime" rings pretty hollow with this one.
One of the on-line sales sites (Thane USA) had these for five easy payments of $39.95, "get two for the price of one," what a deal.
I believe these things started out being priced at $150, but now are commonly sold for $100. There are new ones on Ebay for between $50 and a bit over $150. The pawn shop I was in had them optimistically priced at $69.95 and of course this was for used item the completeness of which was unknown. I guessed that the same kind of person who might buy one of these in the first place was the same kind who would be trundling their purchase down to a pawn shop shortly thereafter to raise a little cash.
The whole pitch behind this machine of course is the water filtration gimmick. I decided to prowl around online to see if I could find any information on these. It seems that this machine is sold via informercials and online sales. There are several versions of it, marketed by different companies. Here's a link to the Amazon.com version:
http://www.amazon.com/Turbo-Filtration-System-Vacuum-Cleaner/dp/B001MEZN5K
You can look through the customer reviews; some good, some bad, many happy people who don't know the difference between a good vac and a bad one. On other sites, "Should I buy this one or a Euro Pro?" type comments. One of the results of American consumers being overwhelmed with a tidal wave of cheap (in all senses) Chinese products is that after while, they aren't able to descern quality from crap. When it's all crap, what is there to compare to? The phrase, "Built to Last a Lifetime" rings pretty hollow with this one.
One of the on-line sales sites (Thane USA) had these for five easy payments of $39.95, "get two for the price of one," what a deal.
I believe these things started out being priced at $150, but now are commonly sold for $100. There are new ones on Ebay for between $50 and a bit over $150. The pawn shop I was in had them optimistically priced at $69.95 and of course this was for used item the completeness of which was unknown. I guessed that the same kind of person who might buy one of these in the first place was the same kind who would be trundling their purchase down to a pawn shop shortly thereafter to raise a little cash.
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