Dear LPG, 

This is not the clearest picture in the world, but it does tell a story.  It is a little long-winded but there is a point to it…

It has to be at least 12 years since I last bought a new vacuum cleaner and, back then, it was a lot easier to actually find a shop where you could look first and sometimes even get a demonstration before you parted with your money.  There was also the option of taking a look in the Argos catalogue before you started mulling your way through the internet shops.

I don’t think that I am an expert, perhaps it was luck, but the one I chose at the time was really effective and it had a six-year guarantee which also caught my eye.  It was a good old-fashioned upright which came with all those bits; the upholster fitting, the extendable hose, the crevice tool, and mains plug.  So effective was the machine that it rose to ‘she’ status in my home.

About four years later my nephew came to stay for a couple of weeks and, to my utter surprise one day, offered to do the hoovering for me.  I don’t know what he did to it, but it never worked again after his interaction, it just completely stopped working; no sound, no anything.   I was so disappointed but decided to get the updated version of the same model and, in due course, it came.  

I put the new one through its paces, but it was not the same, and I soon realise that the bit that sucks up the dirt was broken. I phoned the manufacturers and they promised to send me another one, but while I was talking to their assistant I mentioned my original beloved machine.  She asked when I bought it, and I still had the bill which was lucky because it proved that my 6-year guarantee was still valid.   So not long after, two replacement vacuum cleaners arrived on my doorstep with assurance that their senders did not want the originals back.  

The new version of the original was as good as its predecessor, but I still had problems parting with the old one and so it ended up under the stairs, while the new version of the newer one was much better too, but there is only room for so many vacuum cleaners in one house.   

That is when I took the picture that I hope LPG has paired with my message.  Well, I gave the sound version of the newer machine to a friend, and she also took the defective one which worked up to a point, while it was as if nothing had changed when it came to keeping my carpets clean.

That was until last week when the motor in mine made a funny noise and the hoover completely lost her appetite for sucking up dirt which gave me that sad feeling all over again.  I knew that replacing her was not going to be easy or guaranteed after all this time, and those EU restrictions on suction power that we all learned about in 2017 could only have a negative effect too.  I have been known to do a bit of hoovering while babysitting my grandchildren and all the new-fangled ones my children have in their homes are just not the same in my humble estimation.   

I think that we older people are more prone to repair than replace, and I really thought that this was the end of the road but, I was just about to get another new one when I remembered my original.  It was still under the stairs, and I wondered if I could make one good one out of the two bad.   When I took them to the repair shop, the one phrase that the proprietor did not have to say is, ‘The problem is that you just can’t get the parts these days’ and I don’t know how long it will last but, at the moment my story has a happy ending, and my house is still clean.

The moral of the story is, at the risk of going against all the usual advice, hoarding sometimes has its advantages and, I know that it has been posted before on this website, but can I remind you about the importance of keeping your receipts…

HY, Ladywell.