Keeping up with the Joneses

Kate got one so now we had to go and copy her. Seriously, though, our vacuum broke a short time after she replaced her own. She'd done a lot of research and friend-polling to figure out the best one, so I just called her up and picked her brain about it. We got a Dyson DC14, which we've had almost 48 hours. It's fine, it's a vacuum, nothing to get orgasmic about but hey, it works. The customer service seems nice. I called them up because the box advertised "5 year warranty" and then the paperwork inside said "2 year warranty". It turned out it was just a packaging error and we do have a 5 year warranty. The man was kind enough to register it for us over the phone and email me confirming this in writing.

The funny story about getting the vacuum: I will try to shorten this and not go on and on like I will if I tell you this in person! Anyway, we bought it from Target, using 2 gift cards and the remainder on Ryan's Discover Card. Ryan paid for it and lugged it back to the car while I got Lauren settled in the carseat. Got home and discovered a giant "spider" alarm on it, which the store forgot to take off. It was such a hassle parking at Target and waiting on lines that I decided to call the manager to see if there was some trick to it, where I could take it off at home. She told me, "oh, just cut it off, it's fine, nothing will happen". Like a fool, I listened.

The alarm blared at piercingly high decibals while I called her back and she told me "oh, umm...sorry, just put it in the trash can, it will stop eventually.". It might have, but not before my neighbors shot me. So, I drove back to to Target-picture this one-with the blaring alarm in my hand, marched past security and straight to the front of the line at customer service, asking for the manager by name. She took the alarm, apologized, and ran to shove it in a drawer in the back room until someone could deactivate it. I then asked her if I could have some kind of discount for my trouble. After all, I did have to drive all the way back to the store, park, and suffer a headache of hearing the thing for half hour.

She said, "sure, I'll give you 15% off" and then rang up the purchase again, so that the 15% could be refunded to Ryan's credit card. Only it accidentally went onto the gift card instead, which the cashier had thrown in the trash. Another half hour later, the cashier eventually found the gift card in the trash. They could not figure out another way of doing the transaction other than voiding the earlier purchase and ringing it up again on one of my credit cards. But to thank me for waiting so patiently, they volunteered to give me 30% off the Dyson.

Sweet, except when I got home, Discover card had called Ryan. Apparantly instead of voiding the purchase, it charged his Discover card twice. And now it's also on my Visa. Grrrrr....
I hate sorting out these sorts of messes. Something like this happened to me in the 90's once at Radio Shack with an AmEx card and it never did get fixed, I had to pay for something twice that I'd returned. Anyway, I have all of the managers' names, who helped me, and I'm sure given the uniqueness of the situation, they will remember me when I have to go down there in person yet again to straighten this out once Ryan's paper statement arrives.

But back to the Dyson, it's got pretty good suction but the attachments are a bit cumbersome. We got the big honking one, not the light little one Kate has. It did suck up a lot of Jake hair from the carpet. It had been a week since the last vacuum (a Kenmore cannister vac) broke, so the carpets really needed it. It will be nice not to have to buy bags. I was worried that it would be a hassle dumping the cannister but it was quite easy.

Okay, now I'm bored of this subject and I assume all of you are, too. So if you have vacuum questions, ask me, otherwise, end story. Or better, yet ask Kate! :)