Many thanks for all your r/r/c's. Also on dooyoo, under the same name. Anyone in or around South Wal...
Many thanks for all your r/r/c's. Also on dooyoo, under the same name. Anyone in or around South Wales looking for decent, beech office furniture? Changing our office furniture, if interested, please message me.
Member since:08.01.2006
Reviews:117
Members who trust:80
I bought my Dyson in September 2004. I had decided on a Dyson for a few reasons, I was seduced by the brand, I was keen on the allergy control feature and I wanted an upright cleaner. This sounded ideal.
At £219.99, it was pricey, so a neighbour let us borrow hers prior to committing ourselves, we were impressed and decided yes, we should buy this Dyson. Now, I don't suffer with allergy/dust problems myself, but hubby does, so being the sensitive soul he is, this again seemed to tick all the boxes. We handed over our hard earner cash and got in return, a huge box with the wonder of Dyson waiting inside.....
ABOUT DYSON IN BRIEF: James Dyson decided to manufacture a new model under his own name in Britain after success abroad. In June 1993 he opened his research centre and factory in Wiltshire, not far from his home, and developed a machine that collected even finer particles of dust (microscopic particles as small as cigarette smoke). The result was the DCO1, the first in a range of cleaners to give constant suction.
THE DC07- AN OVERVIEW A Root 8 cyclone (2nd Generation of Dyson Suction) vacuum cleaner with 45% more suction than a dual cyclone (the first Dyson suction technology), Lifetime HEPA filtration Designed for allergy sufferers. Highest level filtration, with Bactisafe screen to trap and kill bacteria and mould on contact.
THE FEATURES: Root8Cyclone™ technology B.A.F. Seal of Approval Reversible wand Hygienic and quick to empty Clear bin™ Auto carpet-height adjustment Fastest stair cleaning Car and upholstery cleaning On-machine tool storage Blockage removal Automatic suction changeover valve Lifetime washable filters
So, it all sounded great to me.....
THE PACKAGING: The Dyson came in a rather large brown cardboard box, although large, this is suitable for recycling, as it is just the same as any normal brown box. Polystyrene inners to protect the cleaner. Now, we had to had to have 2 of us to tackle the unpacking of the Dyson, one to pull the cleaner out, one to pull the box back! What a kafuffle! but it's OK, no sharp staples on anything to catch ones fingers on.
THE ASSEMBLY: The assembly? A vacuum cleaner? Needs to be assembled? Surely not? Well that was my reaction when hubby said 'Oi, we have to put this together'. Luckily it is fairly easy. You need to put the hose attachment on to bottom of the cleaner, this is a simple push in motion, and it clicks into place. Secondly you need to thread your handle through the hose and this is easy, it clicks into place again, at the top, to indicate you have correctly positioned the handle. Great, an easy assembly product in a box! All that it is left to do is to add your tools to the on board positions....
THE ACCESSORIES: With this cleaner you get 3 tools to use with the hose attachment and they are: A crevice tool (long, thin & narrow tool, ideal for corners) A brush attachment (a smallish took with bristles) A stair tool (slightly wider, with 2 velvet strips on)
My only gripe with the tools is that they are fairly small to be as effective as I would like, they feel quite sturdy though & it is useful to keep them on the cleaner rather than in a plastic bag at the bottom of a cupboard somewhere.
THE
LOOK: When I bought this cleaner, I was impressed by the quirky colours, the blue and the purple, the purple having a slightly glittery tone to it as well. The main body of the cleaner is purple, with the blue being part of the feature accentuation. The cylinder is the opposite though, it is blue with purple accents marking out the release button, which releases the bottom of the cylinder to get rid of your dust/dirt/nasty stuff etc, and there is also a purple release button to release the cylinder away from the cleaner.
I do feel now, however quirky it was 18 months ago, it looks tacky now, especially in my cream cream and twigs house! Although I have to give it its due, aside from the colour (which I picked) it is a nice looking machine, still quite futuristic. It fairly bulky though, it's not easy to pop it in a corner and not notice it, you do always notice it's there & visitors always say 'Oh you've got a Dyson...', so best to pop in it a cupboard I feel, though we haven't got one!!
SETTING UP: After assembly and popping your tools on to your cleaner, you are ready to go, though you obviously need to plug this into the mains. A long lead on this cleaner is very good, in fact it is supposed to be long enough for you to plug in your Dyson anywhere and you should have enough flex to vacuum anywhere.
To turn your Dyson on, you need to locate the on button, a bright blue button located between the clip for clipping on the handle and the cylinder. On first inspection, I didn't realise that this was the on switch & I was pressing every other blue piece of plastic on the vacuum but this one.
SWITCHING IT ON: The button is easy to press in, no need to worry if you have difficulty with fiddly buttons, this is large enough for a 2 or 3 fingered press down, I think this is great because I am not particularly dextrous and some cleaners have tiny buttons on! On switching it on, I was first hit me was the noise of the cleaner, it is really loud, much louder than the Goblin vacuum I had previously.
SO, HOW DO YOU USE IT? Ok, well the Dyson is a very easy vacuum to use as an upright, in my opinion, to get going, you pull the handle back towards yourself, the lower body of the Dyson needs to be kept on the floor, so you may need to use your foot to keep it steady, this is no hardship, and away you go with a backwards and forward motion, as per normal but my initial though in writing this review is that this cleaner is quite heavy, maybe it wouldn't be suitable for someone who is a bit frailer or an elderly person, I think it would depend on the individual but that was my gut feeling when I came to this paragraph.
Of course this vacuum has another purpose, in can be used in an upright position, with the hose attachment and the tools. In order to use this effectively, you need to load your tool onto the end of the handle, you first need to push back the cover that covers the hole at the end of the handle, this is a good feature, I can just imagine if you had children that they would probably take pleasure in popping marbles, toys, food down this hole! You need to ensure that the Dyson is fully upright when you want to use the hose, there appears to be a locking mechanism that ensures that the main cleaner cannot be used whilst the hose is in use. Again, the ease of use here is pleasing, there is not hard work of fiddling to get to use the hose, you simply pull at a blue button, again generous in proportion, and the hose comes away.
The hose has enough length that you could stand at the bottom of the stairs, using the hose attachment to vacuum all the way to the top. Obviously if you have lost of stairs, it may not get to do all of them, equally we have a half dog turn on our stairs and this is where our Dyson can't manage, the turn ensures it can't do the stairs in one go and that's where the Dyson has a big problem, which I'll come to later.
THE DYSON EXPERIENCE:
I first use this as the upright and I was very impressed. My cats had traipsed cat litter from the kitchen into the hallway, the Dyson found picking up these fiddling stones very easy. We also had sawdust on the carpet from an accidental spillage before cleaning the hamsters out, again, this is fiddly to pick up and many cleaners break it up into small pieces before spitting it out, making it a lot harder to do anything with, but not with this Dyson, it made easy work of it. My only disappointment initially was that when I used Shake n Vac, it wasn't always picking up the small granules, it was annoying because I did have to get my Dust buster out to the patches that were missed but as I was impressed with it on the whole as an upright, I was willing to let this go by the by.
I then proceeded to try to use the Dyson with the hose attachment. My first try was met with frustration, my Dyson would not lock into the up position to let me use the hose, even though it would stand and lock up normally. Andrew managed to fix it though; it was just something that had got caught in the mechanism, that could be retrieved, phewy. So I set about again trying to use this hose attachment. Second attempt, I got this all working and it managed to pick up easily a spillage of some rice on the lino, great, much easier than a dustpan and brush!
The dirt chamber as I called it, was easy to empty, you released it away from the main body of the vacuum, I then placed it over my wheelie bin and pulled the trigger, all the dust fell out in one easy motion but the amount of dust that rose up was horrendous, it would defeat the object of the allergy protection in my opinion. I did try emptying it into a black bag but again, the dust rose up and got into my nose and throat...YUK
Pet hair was very easy to vacuum up with this Dyson, I used the brush attachment to effectively clear up fur left behind by my cats.
General dust/dirt were always very effectively picked up, even if they were slightly damp.
My only gripe so far was that I couldn't use it on my stairs, as they hose couldn't reach around the stair turn.
As well as emptying the collection chamber, you also need to keep your Hepa Filter clean. This is located on the bottom of the machine, indicated by a blue lever, the whole thing came out. The Hepa filter is located inside a screw chamber and it made of a spongy material. You are advised to wash under plain water, wring dry then allow to dry naturally before replacing. Now if anyone has washed a sponge before, you will know how long they can take to dry, so it is best to wash the filter after vacuuming and before you need to use it again.
After 3-4 vacuums with my Dyson, my new best friend, my carpets were looking slightly less grubby and I was really impressed. The Dyson made vacuuming easy work, especially as it was upright, I just had to grab it, plug it in and switch it on and away I went. My Dyson and I had a happy relationship for another 3-4 months then we started to fall out......
I noticed the Dyson suddenly became unable to pick anything off the carpet; it just sort of churned things around a bit and spat them out. The suction appeared to be no existent in the hose attachment too. Hmmmm, this shouldn't happen with a £220 vacuum cleaner promising no loss of suction...I went online and the Dyson website has a really fantastic help section, it's interactive to your model, it goes through hundreds of questions, quite literally, it asks you to check the cylinder, the hepa filter, the suction tubes, literally everything.
After pretty much dismantling my Dyson, I couldn't find the source of the problem, nothing was blocking it, I cleaned the Hepa filter, I pushed through the suction tubes and put it all back together again and fingers crossed I hoped it would work. Sadly this appeared to be a total waste of time, nothing improved, and I just seemed to be making a huge mess instead of clearing it up.
Now, I was aware of a 2 year guarantee with Dyson and with their service numbers being so handy, they're on the machine, I gave them a call. I had already registered my Dyson with them and I would advise anyone else to do the same, as you are not able to get the service help so easily otherwise. Anyhow, I explained the problem and an engineer visit was arranged, I did have to wait 3 weeks though, although being in autumn and not so many people coming around, I wasn't too bothered. The service people were good, friendly, helpful & I was asked to have my receipt for the engineer, otherwise I would have to pay £55 for the visit. Now that's a job, keeping all the receipts and I did have to hunt for mine! But it is worth doing so because I wouldn't fancy paying for a Dyson engineer if I didn't have to.
In between making the call and the visit, I kept on trying to make my Dyson work, it failed and it stared to make horrendous screeching noises at me, I'll leave it to the engineer then....
At the visit, the chap was very polite, showed me ID and checked the details he had. He asked for details of the problem such as when it started, what would I describe it as? do different floor surfaces make things better/worse. I felt he was very thorough prior to opening the machine. He dismantled the Dyson and I left him to it. He was again very through and meticulous in his method, he looked absolutely puzzled at some points I have to say. Although he couldn't find anything wrong, he replaced any parts he felt could cause a problem. That was good; I hoped I would have a new machine in theory! There was no charge for the work he carried out or for his time, which was over an hour as it was covered by my guarantee. Before he left, he did test it and it picked up beautifully.
My Dyson and I were reconciled...but only for a few weeks before the same problem occurred, again the same Dyson man came out again and he was really stumped as to what the problem was. He replaced the brush bar and put in a new Hepa filter but again, nothing was visibly wrong with the machine. Before leaving he tested it again and once more, it began to work.
This time I got a good 8 months of service from my machine before we fell out again, this time we fell out over some dust, I wanted it to vacuum it up, it had other ideas, it would prefer to spit out everything after churning it up, making it into the smallest pieces it could then leaving them on the carpet whilst growling fiercely at me, I began to feel afraid of my Dyson, I was sure it hated me....I sat, looking at this Dyson thinking where had I gone wrong? What had I done that been so bad????
Ok, this is the 3rd breakdown in just under a year; I decided to ask for a replacement from Dyson. I went though the problems with Dyson on the phone, although they agreed I'd obviously had a lot of problems, because their engineer couldn't actually find a fault, they were unwilling to provide a replacement without a 3rd service call but they asked me to pay for this call out because I'd had an unusual amount of call outs in one year. As you can imagine, I was not willing to pay when my machine was faulty but Dyson wouldn't budge, I had to pay or I'd get no service call.
Husband rang in the end, he managed to get an appointment booked for 7 weeks ahead, that was OK, we were at least getting it fixed, we hoped. We decided to put the Dyson away for the interim and buy a cheap vacuum cleaner from Tesco, this worked a treat!!
You can imagine the next bit...the engineer came...he found nothing wrong. This time, it was a different engineer and although he could see what it was doing, he refused to acknowledge any problem with the machine, which got my frustrations pumping. I then spent a further 90 minutes on the phone to Dyson but they refused to do anything.
I then decided I would take the cleaner back to the shop where I bought it from; they offered to send it back to Dyson as it still had the 2 year warranty. I agreed as I thought they would repair it or at least have it tested in their conditions. So they very helpful chap phoned Dyson but they refused to take it back when he gave them the serial number, he offered to have it repaired in house, although because of the warranty his manger overrode his offer...cheers.
We took the Dyson home and it says in our understairs cupboard for 6 months until earlier this month. I decided that it had been in recuperation for long enough & it was time to get down to business.
I unwound the cord, plug it in...Oh the noise was substantially less now, sounds promising. I started vacuuming....oh...it's still checking pieces out left right and centre...great....so nothing has changed.
I have phone Dyson again & I have another service call booked for August, the last time before the guarantee expires, I have been trying to get a replacement but no will agrees there is something fundamentally wrong with this Dyson & I'm not sure if I will ever get it sorted and I do feel like I have totally wasted my money.
In addition, Dyson recommend you have routine service calls on an annual basis, these cost £55 a time, if you haven't had one and your machine breaks down, they will use this as a get out clause to not do any work under the warranty.
THE VERDICT I do not recommend this machine, I feel it is too expensive; you pay for the name and not much else. I am sure there are similar vacuums by other brands which would be much better, even if you do have to have a bag. I feel that although the customer service provided by Dyson was good initially, once they couldn't fix the problem, that was it, there was no way of helping me resolve the issue once I'd parted with my cash. I can see the machine, when fully working would be an excellent cleaner, with the added bonus of the Hepa filtration but as mine has only ever worked for intermittently, I don't feel this is a benefit to me. Price wise, when I bought it, it was the 2nd to the top of the range Dyson & I really felt that I was paying for longevity of my vacuum cleaner amongst other features but I have felt really let down. Looks wise, I don't like it any more though some people might find it quirky, it is too bulky for a small house/flat if you don't have storage areas, even then, it takes up most of it because it is so wide. In addition, I also feel it is too heavy for the elderly/infirm/people with joint problems to pick up. Carrying it upstairs would be almost impossible for such people, even I had trouble. If you are desperate for a Dyson, make sure you have a look at all the models available, there is a good interactive cleaner chooser on the Dyson site, which will help you find the right Dyson for you but just remember to register your machine as soon as you get it too. Dysons appear to be expensive to buy but they also have maintenance costs too, so budget for that when you buy. Be aware too that spare parts can be expensive from Dyson, it could be worth looking on eBay for anything you require.
It's back to the understairs cupboard with mine for the moment.
INFO: www.dyson.co.uk Current Price £199.99
THANKS FOR READING
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
1200 watts. 3.5 litre dust capacity. Dustbin full indicator. 5-stage washable ... more
filtration. Cord storage. Includes on-board stair tool, crevice tool and brush tool. Also includes stubborn dirt brush and Dyzolv Spot Remover. Stretch hose for...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: Very effective cleaner, easy to manouvre, the handle on the pipe Disadvantages: The brushes could get tangled easily, messy to empty, pricy
sue.51 25.01.2004 (25.01.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Dyson DC07
Advantages: cleans deep down, going beyond the surface dirt, restores life to old carpets Disadvantages: suction so strong you can get pulled over when using the wand, jet engine sound
Shroud 26.09.2007 (26.09.2007)
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Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Dyson DC07
Advantages: Excellent Suction, perfect for busy households, customer service nearly excellent! Disadvantages: Expected the machine to last longer than four years, given the high purchase price!
Jul 10th, 2006
exceptional by (34%):
very helpful by (66%):
