Vacuum Cleaners Discussions

I recently visited a local vac shop, not the one run by a close friend. We discussed Dyson and other brands. He maintains that Dyson WAYYY overestimated the cost of returns/warranty repairs when he invaded the US vac market, which is why the Dysons were given a 5 yr warranty. He said Dyson, despite rumors to the contrary, is making money hand over fist, and show no sign of slowing down. Even though the hose is excluded as a warranty part, Dyson is issuing repair authorizations for them. He also said he is selling Dyson dirt canisters, cords, roller brushes, and hoses like there is no tomorrow.  He said Dyson is ready to cut prices when necessary to boost flagging sales.  The DC-07 will make a reappearance at  $299 or lower when the time is right.

I stopped by Best Buy to purchase a memory card  for my camera, and wandered down the vac aisle, of course. 33 full size vacuums on display. THREE bagged machines, all uprights. Other than Dyson, only ONE canister, a Dirt Devil straight suction. Dyson had on display three cans and four uprights, over 20% of the vac sku offerings!  There are new and interesting things in the vac shops, but nothing has changed at BBR where most of America buys their vacuums.  According to him, Panasonic has lost the contract to build Sears canisters.
All of this is, of course, excellent news for Kirby.

Severus wrote:

Hi SEVERUS:

Why do dyson fans and advocates praise themselves and Sir James when other brands add model[s] to their line up by using cyclonic bagless technology.  Dyson doesn't get a cut of these sales and profits.  When customers forego dyson for a competitor then dyson loses out.  Imputing credit to dyson strokes Sir James' ego but takes money away from dyson.  It makes no difference to buyers/sellers whose product copies who and what.  It's about sales.  It's hard to get big box retail customers to plunk down $400, $500, $600 for a bagless vacuum.  Especially with the abundance of good/excellent $129 to $200 bagged/bagless models on the retailers' shelves.  Many of these others with more desirable features that dyson models. In a few years, the industry's vacuum brands came up to speed with cyclonic technology at alot lower prices than dyson.  While dyson, during this same time wasted its time and effort on all sorts of non-vacuum endeavors.  Dyson remains a one vacuum product brand: High priced bagless vacuums.  Period.  Ball wheeled vacuums is just a variation on the same old theme.  It will probably go the same way as dyson's ball barrow.  Oblivion.

Maybe Dib-stir knows and will tell us what happened to the 2007 dish washer patent dyson filed.  It's been almost 3 years now and 500 engineers later.  Anything yet?

Carmine D. 

CarmineD wrote:

Carmine,

You ask a good question.  The trick is to treat each person's statements in isolation.  I'm only referring to Tom Gasko's predictions.  He predicted that Dyson style bagless would catch on with other manufacturers as patents expired.  Unfortunately, I'm relying on memory and I don't have time or interest in going back to his exact words.  

Other manufacturers getting on the dual cyclone bandwagon is probably is not good for dyson, particularly when they have better designs for the rest of the vacuum cleaning system and lower prices.  However, that is the way business works.  Everyone copies everyone else's ideas when the patents expire.  Or if you're a Chinese company, you swipe the ideas as soon as you can get away with it. 

Severus wrote:

Hello SEVERUS:

The crux of the predictions about the race to copy dyson's bagless technology was its superiority over bags.  The corollary was that bagged vacuums would go the way of the horse and buggy [Tom Gasko's exact words.  Recall he wanted to use the name dyson in his store name].  To the contrary, the industry's vacuum makers copied and marketed their own bagless cyclonic technology because they saw unique sales and profit opportunities.  Compete side by side against the highest priced big box bagless brand in the same sales venues as dyson at alot lower prices.   Bagless vacuum models have succeeded in taking sales away from dyson.  Bagged vacuums much to the chagrin of Sir James and his ridcule of bags, are still the mainstay of independent vacuum store brands in the USA.  Both bagged and bagless models coexist at all big box retailers in the USA.  Paper bag replacements/brands, rather than disappearing, have expanded in quantity and sales at all big box retail stores.  Dyson and Sir James have been far better for the vacuum industry in the USA, both bagged and bagless, than it has been itself.

Carmine D.

I happened on an old Filter Queen magazine ad from the '40s.  The pitch then was that messy bags -- at that time the permanent cloth type -- weren't necessary but the emptying process was over simplified just as it is today.  Dumping FQ's wide-mouth dust bin, indoors or out, was just as prone to spreading dust as bagless vacs are now.

Most vacuums with disposable bags do simplify the issue of emptying but apparently there is a portion of the public that assumes by being freed of the responsibility of buying disposable bags, that's all there is to it for bagless models and that lives have been made better.  The bogus side to all this is that the fine print about frequency of emptying,  filter cleaning and/or replacement is read by few.  That will be great for repair shops and land-fill sites.

Besides basic price, the sale of bagged or baggless vacuums hinges a lot upon buyer ignorance and how much possible buyers like fairytales.  I'm in and out of sales venues of all types all the time and I am hard pressed to recall a time when I've walked in and heard a customer telling a sales guy as opposed to the sales guy telling them.  That said, I think bagless vacuum will prove of great interest to many us out looking these days due to present economic situations.  Were I in need of a machine now, I can't say the idea of bagless wouldn't cross my mind though, well aware of the inconveniences, I'd surely be prone to opt for a Rainbow or other water-type machine.  Next choice would be be to go back to just a plain old permanent bag vac and be done with it.

Venson

Venson wrote:
I was thinking to myself, what would I buy if I  had to buy a new vacuum today (fortunately, I won't have to buy one for a long time).  I had a bit of sticker shock the last time I looked at the CR ratings and saw wondered if the data on vacuum bag prices was accurate.  When you see prices like $5 per bag or more, it makes you think twice about the convenience of a bagged vacuum.  Fortunately both of my vacuums use relatively cheap bags.   In fact, I decided to test out a generic brand for my lux canister, and it seems like the suction has improved slightly. 

Severus wrote:

Hi Severus,

Which generic brand do you use?  From past use, I always felt that the genuine Electrolux bags were the better deal.  It wasn't so much a matter of suction level for me but fill capacity.  I usually set my Lux automatic at the halfway mark, reasonable I thiink, and it shut off once the bag was full but not so full as to lead to my dogging the motor while cleaning.  The generics usually didn't have the multi-layer lining and clogged up more quickly leading me to change them before they were filled to capacity.  Lux bags for the automatic models were/are small but usually provided what I saw as an impressive rate regarding use and performance..

On the other hand, though great performrs, high priced Miele's bags make me very glad the place is small.  You know can put a whole chicken (not the organic kind of course) on the table for the cost of one bag.

Some more -- some less, a large part of the public either are or soon will be challenged by pricing on consumables for vacuums.  Back in the day, Panasonic, Electrolux and some other makers of vacuums we might have assumed used only disposable bags did offer permanent cloth bags as an option.  I wonder if that will come into play again even though the "new" solution to the problem is supposed to be the bagless machine. 

However, I once had a very good friend whom expected gas station attendants to all be Einstein.  Like him, expecting too much may be my greatest fault.  A good, reasonably priced vacuum with reasonable maintenance cost?  Might as well wish for the moon. 

That's why I've grown so much in favor of giving used machines or rebuilts like Lux, Kirby, etc., another run around the track.  Most will go the distance if in good shape and cost far less to acquire.

Best,

Venson

Severus wrote:

SEVERUS, VENSON and all:

Interestingly, since the on-slaught of all the bagless models in recent years, and contrary to the predictions by a certain bagless maker with its die-hard fans, these facts and circumstances occured:

• vacuum paper bag brand makers [especially in the USA] have increased,
• paper bags have improved considerably in quality as dirt containment devices some using self-sealers,
• germ/bacteria retardants are more common now in the paper with odor resistors, 
• and more importantly bags are much better filtering devices, probably the best the industry has ever had,
• supplies of paper bags have flourished 2 and 3 fold in quantity in most big box retail store aisles,
• presumably demand of paper bags have increased too to justify the added supply,
• presumably sales [and profits] of paper bags by big box retailers have increased too,
• AND paper bag prices have gone up, probably the highest now than ever in the industry. 

Question:  Why and how could these things be so?  Shouldn't prices of bags go down?  Especially based on the on-slaught of all the bagless models, in all budget and price ranges, with all the dire predictions by bagless fans that paper bags would be made passe, a dinosaur [like me as I was called by bagless fans and admirers] of a by gone era.  With bagless as the all new beautiful feature.  Bagless proponents accuse vacuum store independents of self-serving profiteering from the sales of bags.  Yet, all the big box retailers, the primary venues for bagless vacuums, are making a sales killing off paper bags.  What happened?

Carmine D. 

Carmine - What happened was that during the paper bag era in the 1970s, pollution on a widespread basis in the 1980s has doubled human's allergies by the 1990s. I recall when I was growing up in the 1980s my generation didn't suffer from anything other than sunburn or the odd child here and there having some minor Asthma problem. However now the children and young adults I teach suffer from a whole long list of allergies and other problems (Diabetes in my generation was contained in pill form and sugar boosts; now some of my kids have to inject themselves!). Even if bags have made dust collection cleaner, the manufacturers have doubled their efforts to ensure that dust doesn't become a problem in the home. The idea of bagless isn't entirely new if you take Black and Decker's original dust buster on board and during the 1990s I recall many brands trying out larger pleated material filters to offer a cheaper "bagless," principle against the plastic filter/shroud mesh principle as seen here:





Venson - I'm not sure if they do this in the U.S/Canada but many brands in the UK now offer reusable cloth dust bags at the time of purchasing bagged cylinder vacuums. Electrolux for example do this with their current Powerplus range if paper bags are hard to buy. As for upright brands - not many offer a reuseable larger cloth bag. In the 1990s Hoover UK went out of their way to produce an "exclusive" line up of pastel blue vacuums in the form of their Purepower, Telios, Alpina and Arrianne range under the "Lifetime," sub-model name brand. Electrolux also produced a similar upright reuseable washable fabric dust bag for their Boss bagged uprights but they were very rare to find and Electrolux don't always sell the fabric bags now.








I had a Hoover Arriane Lifetime for example, came with 2 paper disposable dust bags and a reuseable material dust bag, I'm glad to say I still have today, 15 years after I bought the vacuum which was sold many years ago. Although Hoover still sell the Purepower upright bagged vacuums, they don't kit the machine out with the "Lifetime," material bag unless you specially order the bag as a optional cost consumable. There was talk on a UK Hoover forum that the cylinder bag can be used on Miele cylinders but I've a feeling that the bag holder has to be cut to fit the Miele holder in the first instance.

Interestingly enough though when I have tried cloth bags, they are a great idea but they are messy when it comes to emptying them, especially when dust sticks to the fabric of the bag and for much it does remind me of the times when our Oreck XL bag used to slip off the hook (before they improved it with the fold down hinge bag holder) and the fabric bag would be coated in dirt. Of course a way around this is to chuck it straight into the washing machine after it has been completely emptied, but having done this anyway and then dried in an electric tumble dryer, some dust and fluff can be found clinging to the surface of the bag. Sebo's commercial uprights can be used with a fabric dust bag but none of their domestic models can use the bag as the S Class filter wouldn't be able to cope and uses a slightly different design format.

CarmineD wrote:

You listed most of the reasons for increased bag prices (in red).

No doubt the uncommon is occuring where you live, however,   bags and bagged vacs are almost non exixtant in Sears, BB, WM and other big box stores outside LV and other towns that you do not visit.

What % of vac sales is bagged?

vacmanuk wrote:

Yes, agree.  And other factors too.

Carmine D.