Crying over a Hoover is at best pointless, at worst pathetic. It points to a worrying lack of perspective and asks questions around priorities. On the grand scale of real-life crises, Hoovers just don't feature, not even in a distant runner-up position.
So I'm not proud to admit it but won't deny it: when my lovely old Miele slowly wheezed its way to an early grave, it proved the final straw in a litany of domestic failings (the marriage thankfully not one of them, yet) that had occurred that month - the oven, Easter Saturday, the day before seven people were due for Sunday lunch; the car, after too many weeks of that metal-on-metal sound that even the hard-core of stuff-mechanical procrastinators could no longer ignore; the bathroom tap; that effing leak in the extension roof that just won't seem to go away by itself - and I sat right down and cried myself a river.
And it's not even like there hadn't been signs. It had been in failing health for months and hadn't received anything but the most cursory of nursing care, from the basic vital-signs manual: the on-off/check the bag/check for obstruction approach, followed by fervent verbal entreaties to just for chrissake finish the job one more time.
The bank balance didn't even want to broach the possibility of a new Hoover, and it never occurred to me at first that a repair job was an option in an age of update, upgrade, replace. But bless them to the core of their electrical being, Glasnevin Appliances lives, and were as unfazed by my broken Hoover as a long-in-the-tooth A&E nurse negotiating a drunken waiting room. One health check and phone-call update later, and a treatment plan was outlined involving a pretty reasonable financial outlay and an as-good-as-new Hoover ready for collection one day later.
So why not five stars? A small thing. In my book, a customer in front of you takes precedence over one on the phone, when you've already begun dealing with the customer in the shop. It's what the phrase 'Please hold' was invented for, but this is rarely observed in businesses, as phone-call diversion takes precedence over the standing customer almost always. It's a tad annoying. But on the grand scale, I highly recommend trying the repair avenue before consigning another electrical implement to the rubbish heap, and these guys are up to the job. read more
