New Dirt Devil vacuums- Poor quality!

[dustin]

I am up visiting friends, and the last time they came to our house to visit, they had mentioned tbey had bought a new vacuum (I had given them a Eureka F&G style a few years ago), and they hated buying bags. They weren't sure what brand what it was "it's red". Well, tuesday, I found out it was a new Dirt Devil Breeze. I was volunteered to replace the belt (It's only a couple months old) but It "wouldn't pick anything up and just started smoking". My first observation was that it is VERY lightweight and flimsy. I was afraid that I was going to break something just trying to stretch the belt in place. I got the belt on and had to give it a run- not as noisy as Dirt Devils have been in the past, but very "whiny" It seemed to do ok on low pile carpet, But I moved to another part of the house with thicker carpet, and it really didn't impress me. It was not pulling into the carpet at all, so I checked the suction at the hose-pretty weak. I decided it was probably time to clean the filters, which were located under the dirt bin. One thin foam pad over a pleated filter which were about 3"x3". Pretty dusty, and hard to get the dust out. I put it all back together, and tried it again- still not a whole lot of suction, but it had picked up quite a bit of dog/cat hair and carpet fuzz, but not much sand at all. It just seemed so fragile, and literally skated over the carpet, I don't figure it will last over a year. I made the comment I would keep the Eureka for when the new one died. I had a Dirt Devil Breeze before, but the previous version, and truthfully it wasn't bad. Quality is definitely going downhill.

 

[super-sweeper]

The Quality!

It's a shame , isn't it? Businesses boarding up their American factories, out-sourcing to China and what-not to "save money".


What company hasn't done this? America was an industrial super-power years ago. things were built with pride and quality, and then maintained by their owners to last the stand of time.


 


I'd love to wake up tomorrow and have it all back, the quality, the jobs, the life-style, who wouldn't?


 

 

[suckolux]

Bought good, well made, not cheap goods, kept them and took them in for local service regularly! Tell me this did not work better??

 

[super-sweeper]

Suck-o-lux guy-

It worked a WORLD of better! that was a fun time back then, too! America was the world's highest standard of living, now look! People are getting lazy, some would rather gain pounds from all the fast-food junk instead of putting in the effort for a home cooked meal. Imagine, Farther coming home from work, Mother putting that well-nade meal on the table, everyone getting together to spend time together! Now Teens would rather just take the food to their room and watch T.V or do whatever a "snap chat" is. My phone has a DIAL, That you TURN to DIAL out a number, my camera uses film I have developed at the pharmacy, I play my music from records! I WOULDN'T play music from a "Compact Disk", or a "CD" as they call it now.  I wouldn't take a picture from my phone to plaster all over Facebook (Although I'd LOVE to see a Rotary phone take a photograph!).


 


Yes, pretty Rant-ish. But you look back at how things were, and you'll see that not ONLY was the quality of our products were excellent, but the EVERYTHING was "more excellent".

 

[suckolux]

I sense we are of a similar era!

 

[madabouthoovers]

Super Sweeper - I'm wondering how can you talk of such an old way of life if you are only a junior member and not old enough to remember it?


 


Thank your lucky stars you don't live in the UK - we don't make anything here any more - all we do is buy in cheap junk from China, and all the stuff that used to be made here has been moved to China for its production. Most folk here are happy with the cheap junk, and its corporate greed that the cause - plain and simple. Exploit the cheapest avenues of production to make the highest levels of profit - that's 2014 Capitalism for you.


At least you still have the likes of Tacony and Kirby in the States who manufacture there - all we have is Numatic. If we want decent quality at a reasonable price vacs we have to buy German. Its a great pity we cant get Riccar or Simplicity in the UK - and I wonder why they don't want to export their goods outside the States. There just isn't the choice of quality in the UK any more, just, as you Americans call it, cheapo Walmart throw away vacs that the masses waste their money on, and we also don't have the kind of independent vacuum stores in the UK like you do in the States either - they closed down due to cheap Chinese imports.


Yes, What a wonderful world. Corporate greed rules supreme.

 

[super-sweeper]

yes

I may just be a junior member, but I'm old in spirit! I'm nearly a walking encyclopedia, I could tell you every model of Kirby from the C to the sentria II, what colors and styles the 1961 DeSoto came in ( my dream car, by the way. DeSoto's very last model of car, only made to use up t the 7 million dollars of parts Chrysler had on hand. Your choice of black or white, 2 doors or 4). How much air conditioning was as an option, tell the tales of W.T Lance and Montgomery ward. Believe you me, I was born in the wrong era! 

 


Britain does not sound well in the vacuum world, but I'm afraid out own shops are also not taking well to the cheap WAL-MART style of life. Remember having to replace tubes in your tv set? If you didn't know how to, you would call a repair man. You would have to buy a whole new tv to fix one of these new LCD things! Used too you could buy tubes from the pharmacy. It


I would never have that,I love my faithful RCA and KTV CRT sets! Quality that had been serving me well for years!

 

[madabouthoovers]

CRT sets are obsolete in the UK, we all have the Flat panel LCD/LED type now. Very few people are left that own the old type sets, and all our analogue signal transmitters are now also obsolete and defunct - we have to have digital transmissions (SKY, Freeview etc)or cable TV (Virgin media) Most modern TV's have inbuilt digi decoders that the old CRT models didn't, so they are now useless without a set top box or other external decoder.

[this post was last edited: 3/14/2014-23:17]

 

[suckolux]

Our grocery store had tubes and a tester!

 

[super-sweeper]

analog!

I see,I run cable trough my CRT televisions. There's always converter boxes if the need for an over-air transmissions receiving protocol should arise.I'm watching the KTV right now, beautiful pictures quality for 1986! Obsolete, ha! I use a Smith_corona typewriter for nearly all my word Processing needs, I'm lucky there's still an old shop downtown that sells ribbons.I AM obsolete.....

 

[dustin]

I enjoy new technology as much as anyone, but I can see the difference between quality and junk, and appreciate Made in the USA quality. I don't ever see the quality of new vacuums ever improving, we are living in a throw away society- It quits picking up, toss it to the curb and buy another one. Companies don't want you to repair vacuums, whether it be because the parts simply aren't available, or the parts cost more than the whole machine did new.

 

[ornery]

Blame Consumers

This plastic, disposable crap is what consumers want. When Royal only built quality, commercial grade products, their sales were under $5 million as of 1981. Selling cheap, flimsy, plastic units boosted sales to approximately $408 million in 2000. Only reason they can sell so much is because consumers are willing to buy them. Then, they lament the bygone days of "quality". No sympathy here. Royal still builds quality units if you're willing to pay for them.