Hello James. What you say rings quite true with my own experiences. Goblin vacuum cleaners were amongst the cheapest of all on sale. The build quality was poor overall and if I said they were rough around the edges, often literally so, I think I am not being unfair. To a good deal of people who owned a Goblin, it was simply not worth the financial cost or the time to take it for repair. If I had them in for repair, it would only be for blockages, belts, or a new mains lead and so on and so forth. If the cleaner needed parts so to speak, it was rarely cost effective to order from brand new stock, yet waiting for a 2nd hand cleaner to come by to use for spares was like waiting for God, and even then there was no knowing if the same part had failed on the would-be donor machine.
I didn't dare hold any Goblin parts as stock items, which is in contrast to Hoover and Electrolux where I kept many a part available as I knew what I would and wouldn't be able to use in the fullness of time.
As a side comment, have you noticed how the width of the Housemaid cleaner exceeds it's depth? Because of this, I always felt an overwhelming urge to operate the cleaner with two hands, as if it were a carpet sweeper or a snow shovel. I felt the same when using an Oreck too. I find it fascinating how the size and shape of a cleaner can affect the way one uses it. Those cleaners with narrow, deep cleaning heads or square cleaning heads were always easy to use with one hand only.