That Sucks (or doesn't in this case)

It's rant about a big company time again: Curry's is in the firing line this time!

I bought a hoover last year when I moved over to York and I went for one of those little cyclone ones, a Hoover TFS 7202 to be exact, which seemed, according to the numbers/price to be suitable for whizzing around the relatively small house I'm in.

Well, it kinda worked okay but wasn't then best. Over the past 6 months we both used the hoover and each time we noticed more things that it wouldn't pick up and really how poor the suction was. To cut a long story short: I gave it a proper test and checked filters pipes etc at the weekend and came to the conclusion that it just wasn't very good. Maybe the design was faulty, maybe this hoover itself was just broken from the beginning, basically though I wanted to take it back.

So I tried. I was well past the 28days return period but I thought I'd simply ask to swap for a much more expensive one; after all Amazon sell alot of the same models for about £70 less so I reasoned Curry's wouldn't mind too much since they would have a happy customer.

Apparently that's not important to them, they have to follow policies and procedures and I had to phone up Hoover themselves and get an engineer to have a look at fixing it first. All this hassle for a £70 Hoover which I'm sure they must know is rather a low-end model (they don't sell them anymore). I pointed out that I could see nothing broken, it was useless from the start. No, no help at all. Even when I insisted and the customer service person went to talk to the manager, they wouldn't budge.

Very annoying in itself but really they just didn't seem to care, the woman kept saying she was sorry but that was their policy and there was nothing she could do. Why not offer to have a look at the hoover there and then and see what the problem is, maybe then deal with the manufacturer for the customer? Or at the very least offer to get the manufacturers service centre to phone me. Just anything to show that you aren't just being useless and apathetic towards your customers!

What really made this all the more laughable is that I phoned up Hoover directly, gave them the relevant details, explained the issue and they said I just need to provide a serial number and they will give me a code to have the Hoover returned to Curry's. I couldn't believe how efficient they were!

So, not shopping at Curry's again, they've annoyed me. Instead I'll just get my money back and I've already been to Argos to get the replacement cleaner: a Vax Mach Zen which seemed to work really well last night on it's first try! I now have really clean-looking carpets which has actually cheered me up a bit; I like having things nice and tidy and organised and the house was getting to look a bit of a mess. I suspect I'm going to be hoovering lots over the next month so I can really test the new gadget out ... as well as making sure the house is spotless!