Funny....
this should come up. Our district rep was in the other day to brief us on the forthcoming local commercial to be shot in our store. He was at the distributor earlier that day, and had the chance to see one of the new uprights. Unfortunately it already had a broken handle. He didn't know how or why, just that it was broken. Many Oreck products are from China these days, some of our canisters, all of our air purifiers, the Edge, which has been a disappointing seller, and I haven't seen the box, but pretty sure the Magnesium will be a PRC export. The Edge's handles have a history of snapping off, and when you pull back when vacuuming, the rear of the machine's wheels tend to leave the ground. I've sold only one Edge since it's been out, and just replaced the handle on it. When the Golds came out with the new enduralife belt system, the brushroll ends were overheating and melting, so every dealer got a box of re-designed brush rolls to replace the bad ones. Our air purifier towers were problems from the debut, with circuit board problems, but that was remedied rather quickly once the warranty replacements were in large numbers. When we took over the Halo models, there were electronic issues in the handles, and we were shipped boxes full of new handles to handle the warranty demands. The Halo is long gone now, never understood that whole deal, but still do warranty work on them. Newly introduced products supposedly are tested in the market, but makes me wonder who does the testing and for how long. Oreck is trying to keep up with the market, but I wish they would test the new products longer before they introduce them to the public.
