Why is it....

Why is it that when you go to use something, half way through it stops working? I have a Shark Pocket Steam Mop that I use for cleaning my tile floors. I love it because no chemicals or cleaners are needed to use this except water. It does a fantastic job and sanatize too. Ok so here is what happened, I was about 3/4s of the way done with cleaning my tile and the light goes off on it (the light is how you know that the unit is heating the water and working properly). So it no longer is making steam, I unplugged it used a different outlet and still nothing. Ok so it is broken, I looked in the manual under the troubleshooting and it says to call customer service, which I did the next day. I was on hold a very long time just to speack with someone. They said I would have to pack it up with all of the accessaries and send it back with a check for return postage. They also said that it will take 8 weeks for me to get it back :0( So what am I suppose to do with my tile floors until the thing gets fixed?


Also on the subject of floors, my vacuum cleaner is on it's last leg as well. It is a bagged wind tunnel and the on/off switch is worn out. So to turn it on you just plug it in to the outlet and it runs, to turn it off you unplug it. Not very safe way of doing it. Been wanting a new one for some time but would like one that is bagless, and one that doesn't have a filter in the dirt cup. Had one of those and let me tell you it was a huge mess every time I had to empty it.


As you can guess we seem to go through alot of the floor cleaning appliences. Before the steam mop I went through 2 Floormates (the first one after about 1 1/2 yrs stopped doing a good job so I bought a new one and that one never worked well from day 1) which is why I bought the Steam mop. I have been happy with it for about a year but now this happens. As for the vaccume cleaners well, we go through these as well. Over the years I have had bagged, bagless you name it we have had it..They all seem to work fine for a while then they loose suction, a pain to empty, or the switch wears out. Oh we have also gone through several Dirt Devil hand vacs...my first one lasted several years but the moter finally gave out on it so I purchased a new one, Had it for about a month before it broke. :0(


It's not that I am a clean freak or anything, I do clean my house every week so these products don't get over used, but they do get used. When I was growing up we had a Kirby vacuum cleaner that was 25 years old! and that thing was a work horse, all you needed to do to it was change the bag and replace the belt every so often. So what happen with the products they are making now? Why can't they last more than a year? Why is it that we have to keep buying this stuff that keeps breaking down?


I wonder how many of these products are sitting in the junk yards/filling up the land fills?  Yes this weekend we are going out to buy a new steam mop and a new vacuum.