The Lack of a Rug Tool....
....Is only one of the things I dislike about many of today's canister vacs - the bean-counters have caused way too many features that should be standard to be dropped.
The lack of a rug tool is the most obvious. Sadly, my own favorite brand - TriStar - was one of the first to eliminate it, trying to foist that silly clip-on "rug shoe" off on consumers. At least they gave consumers SOMETHING, even if it didn't work all that well. Many vac models today come with - zip.
I also dislike the elimination of horsehair dusting brushes. I'm not saying nylon is all bad - Nutone makes a nylon-bristled dusting brush that's nice and soft - but the nylon used by some manufacturers (I won't name names, but the initials are TTI), is very scratchy and tends to leave fine scratches in furniture finishes. So far as I know, you can't even buy a Hoover dusting brush with horsehair bristles as an upgrade, which feels like they don't care at all.
And my biggest pet peeve is power nozzles where you're expected to use the cleaner's wands for both PN and attachments. It's always fiddly to take the wands off the PN, and annoying. Again, TriStar is an offender here. My solution with my CXL was to purchase two extra wands for use exclusively with the PN. They only cost what my mother used to spend on two weeks' worth of groceries for a family of five!
And speaking of wands, wands are METAL, people - not plastic. Plastic, in case there's anyone at the manufacturers who hasn't figured it out, breaks. Frequently.
I can see some of these "cost containment" measures on BOL models from mass-market manufacturers; there is only so much you can give people and hold to a lower price point. But even TOL vacs selling in the high three figures or even four figures are lacking some or all of these features that anyone who actually USES a vacuum finds pretty essential.
It stinketh.
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