I bought their Metrovac Electra Seep Vacuum through a Hammacher Schlemmer on line listing. I selected it because it touted itself as a 'do it all' stick vac for small apartments and because my own research told me to buy high horsepower for better efficiency in the units clearing strength. I knew when purchasing it that I'd be a partner with Metropolitan Vacuum Cleaner Company as the unit uses disposable paper bag filters which are only available from them. I was OK with this.
The unit is a big disappointment. Not in it's cleaning ability,but in it's overall design and usage. For starters, the disposable bag is very small. So I have found that after 3 sweeps of my small apartment, the bag fills quickly and as it does the efficiency of the unit diminishes.
One major annoyance of this unit is that as the bag fills, it teds to slip off the post you slip it over to lock the paper bag in place inside the unit. I have found that once the bag has some debris in it, besides losing efficiency, the bag blows itself off the steam holding it and then you have stop using the vacuum open it up, re-position the bag on the stem that holds it, close up the unit and keep your fingers crossed that the bag will not instantly come off the stem when you turn the unit back on to resume cleaning. You know it's fallen off the stem because the unit makes a different sound essentially stops picking up debris.
Opening and closing the unit to change the bag is not a smooth chore. Though initially you'd think the simple turn one piece in one till it unlocks would be easy, the metal of the two pieces does not move smooth against each other, making the entire process of changing the bag or connecting it back to the stem, which happens countless times as described above, becomes a big pain in the a## and again, the pieces you need to unlock, turn and slide to open the bag compartment don't move easily. In fact, on my unit, the metal pieces did not turn easily and actually got sort of locked so I had to spray some w d 40 in there to loosens up the pieces.
Switching of attachments is easily done and using the unit as a hand held device is nice. It's pretty light weight. The electric cord holder though there is poorly designed and makes for a sloppy and cumbersome 'put the unit away' now for next time.
Power is what you get here. This is a very powerful unit. But it is a totally frustrating unit to use. And, again, know going into this unit that you are purchasing disposable vacuum bags from them for the life of this unit. You'll need lots of them because they are very small and fill very quickly and malfunction, that is they come off the stem they are supposed to be connected to to use properly, alot. This means you're changing bags even when they are not totally full; they are falling of the stem, and they are small so they don't hold much anyhow.
I should have returned it to Hammacher Schlemmer but I was a bit lazy. It also is not a cheap unit. I noted it's not shown in the on line Hammacher Schlemmer site I just went to.
Overall, disappointing. read more