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[sebo_fan]

Oh you will keep going on and on about Miele - yet you fail to see between the lines of what Benny is saying.

People aren't buying expensive German vacs because buyers are generally conditioned into buying bagless since the age of Dyson and heavy advertising in stores. Thus, in turn Argos and other sellers on the high street will only cater to what "the average buyer" wants due to what we've been led to believe is the next best thing. Dyson is at the top end price wise but for everything else there are the cheap paper filter cone or NLOS washable filter types.

All the while the "cheap end of the bagged" market has always fallen down to Panasonic and Hoover. Both brands stock heavily compared to Miele, SEBO and Bosch - all of these three brands are constantly "out of stock" because not all warehouses from Currys and Argos will stock these machines on the premises and often have to wait for delivery from another warehouse if they have the product.

In turn high street franchises are no longer selling a huge array of brands. Debenhams, House of Frasers and Next for example are all selling Dyson with few Vax models other than their steam cleaner mops.

 

[madabouthoovers]

Expensive German vacs? Excuse me -Miele are not as expensive as Dyson's Malaysian vacs, and much better quality, and you know it.


 


What would you rather have - A Malaysian Proton car or a German Mercedes car, then imagine Proton charged more for their Malaysian cars than Mercedes did for their German cars. Would people be flocking out to buy Protons costing more than Mercs?


 


Exactly, so why are people so willing to pay more for a Malaysian Vac than a German Vac - just because James Dyson says so? Sometimes I cannot understand people's mentality.

 

[sebo_fan]

Expensive as in expensive to run as well, the more I think about it. Miele's dust bags are a classic example. Just 4 in a box there for nearly double the amount of SEBO and even then buyers moan.

You want to have your cake and eat it. You want the kind of service that we had back in the 1980s, where I think you will find that quite a few vacuums were made in Singapore and China, but just not that many compared to today.

You want to have every brand and every model at your fingertips in one stop-shop - a lot of people do - even I do when I'm shopping around for something as basic as a CD/iPod dock but sadly business doesn't work like that nowadays.

There's a lot to be said for the old customer loyalty - there is no loyalty any more - Currys and Argos just want to make money.

The reality of business in the UK also came crashing down the moment pound shops appeared.

I worked in one of them and I was a product buyer for it - I was shocked at the mark up of products that local shops had. Overnight, our pound shop threatened the livelihood of the local DIY shop whose products were no longer seen as a "best value" but rather, a bit of a rip off. Yet, no wonder Pound shops have never had it so good.

 

[madabouthoovers]

Then I'm afraid we are going back to the dark ages, not forward, where we have less and less choice, and get what we have to buy dictated to us by the likes of James Dyson, and TTI, and the good people of the UK have to go and buy a Dyson, or a Vax, as that's pretty much all the big box stores stock now, as James Dyson pays them to ensure that this is the case. This is corruption and rigging of the market place, and is NOT beneficial to customers. It is not how capitalism is supposed to work.

 

[sebo_fan]

Well at the same time when you think back to how franchises worked, you were lucky to find any other brand but Hoover and Electrolux selling on the shop floor. No Philips, Moulinex or Rowenta were available at all companies.

I don't see much of a difference now other than different brands but that same kind of a feeling of having to "shop around" for the brand you might have read up on but can't seem to find.