Vacuum Warranties – What You Need to Know

Vacuum Warranties and what you need to know. It’s important to read the fine print on warranties when you buy a residential vacuum cleaner. 

Will the company cover damages from vacuuming a client’s house? Can you use them for professional house cleaning? 

Before you take one from house to house, listen to this. You’ll find out all you need to know about what manufacturers will or won’t cover for your broken vacuum.

Listen: Vacuum Warranties – What You Need to Know

Watch: Vacuum Warranties – What You Need to Know

Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Vacuum Warranties and What You Need to Know

Vacuum Warranties and what you need to know.  A house cleaner asked this question, “If I am the house cleaner and I’m using the customer’s vacuum and the vacuum breaks, is the vacuum still under warranty“?

If you are a house cleaner, and this is your business and you buy a residential vacuum and you use that vacuum from house to house, to house you’re using it 12 to 15 hours a day. It is not covered under warranty.

But if you are a house cleaner inside a private house and you are using their vacuum cleaner, it is still under warranty. What the manufacturer is asking is did this vacuum go hopping around in and out of people’s cars, up and down flights of stairs from house to house, and was it used 12 to 15 hours a day? Or was this used in one household? And was it used a few times a week?

Vacuum Warranties Have a Lot of Fine Print

So, the reason vacuum warranties are so important is because there’s a lot of fine print. Now, for example, there’s a vacuum called the Eureka Stylus Vacuum. It’s a cordless vacuum.

It’s a fun, lightweight vacuum that’s only six and a half pounds.  This vacuum comes with instructions and information about the warranty.  If you turn the box onto its side, you will see a little sticker called the UPC code.

And the UPC code says it is this vacuum specifically, the vacuum that is inside this box. So, it’s not a general warranty that warranties all the vacuums, it’s a warranty for that specific vacuum.

Your Serial Number Activates the Warranty

So whenever you buy a vacuum or a steamer or another piece of equipment,  you should take your camera and take a snapshot of that serial number, because that serial number is what is going to activate your warranty.

Now, lots of us buy a box, we open it up, it’s shiny packaging, we grab the vacuum out, we plug it in, and we start using it. But what we fail to realize is that there is an owner’s guide that comes with the vacuum that has all the rules and regulations inside.  This is super important for this reason.

Chemicals have Safety Data Sheets

When we use a chemical, we pull up, what’s called the safety data sheet. The safety data sheet tells us all the different pieces of information we need to know about the chemicals that we’re using.

And the safety data sheets are designed for house cleaners that are inside homes every day, all day, using chemicals all day long. And for people that work in manufacturing plants that use chemicals all day long and here’s what you can expect.

So, this is the safety data sheet for the vacuum. Now, the interesting thing is most of you did not know, but every single piece of equipment comes with a user guide. And this vacuum comes with one which is seven or eight pages, and it has all the different instructions on what it is. So, here’s a quick walk through, broken down, and why this is so important.

You Need to Take the User Guide From Every Piece of Equipment

Now, its recommended that you take this piece of information, which is the user guide from every piece of equipment that you buy.

And on the user guide, write down that same serial number. Because what we’re saying is this product and this serial number is what I’m warrantying. And then usually there is somewhere on the brochure on the front or the back or inside the cover, there is like on the safety data sheet, there’s the manufacturer’s information.

So, you’re either going to go to an email or a website, or you’re going to call a phone number and you’re going to register the serial number for that unit.  So, when you register that number, you’re saying, “I, Angela Brown bought this unit at this store on this day, at this price.” And so, once that’s logged into the computer, now your warranty is activated.

It’s Not Under Warranty if You Don’t Activate it

If you don’t activate the warranty, it’s not under warranty. If you don’t activate and register the product, it is not under warranty.

So, the next thing to look at is, what is inside this book.  The first part is the user guide and it has the Eureka promise. So, this vacuum is a Eureka Stylus and they promise it is the best vacuum, best quality, best price in its class. So how do they offer that?

Well, they offer that having their rules and regulations. So, as you open it up, it says that this is what is of this book. So, you can have a quick guide at what is here. Then in big letters, it says, “Warning.”

They Let You Know the Warnings in the Book

Now, if you break the vacuum and you go to have it repaired, they’re going to ask you about some of these things. So, it’s super important. One says to avoid excessive heat and damage to the unit or the battery, or the vacuum cleaner will not operate while charging.

So, you can’t use it while it’s plugged in. Interesting to know.  And it says, do not allow to be used as a toy. Close attention is necessary when used by or near children. So, its not for children to play with.

If You Don’t Follow the Rules, They Don’t Have to Pay

So, one says recharge only with a charger specified by the manufacturer. A charger that is not suitable for one type of battery pack may create a risk of fire when used for another battery pack. What’s interesting about that is if you’re using a cord that has a different power surge, it means it can send more power to the plug.

If it sends more power to the plug, it can blow your plug up. Then when you call and you say, “Hey, it’s under warranty.” They’re going to say, “Did you only use the plug we gave you?” And if you said, “No, I used one from my computer.” Guess what? They don’t have to pay.  So, there is a whole bunch of fine print. So, its important you read that as well.

They Give You a Breakdown of Everything That Comes Inside

This is a breakdown of all the products that come inside. Now, when I get a new product, I love to open this up and I love to look at all the different pieces and match it up with the pieces that are inside.

Did everything that’s supposed to come in here, arrive inside the box. And the reason I say that is because sometimes if you buy a box from a third party store, it is possible that either it lost a piece in shipping or somebody opened up the box.

And they took it out as a sample, they may have used it as a floor display and then pieces of it were never returned. So, ask yourself “Do I have all the pieces that I thought I paid for?”

The Guide Also Explains How to Use Special Features

Now,in the manual, it shows you how to put the vacuum together because with this particular vacuum, the handle un-attaches so that you can use it as a handheld vacuum. And then there are other pieces that attach onto it for the handheld use.

But if you didn’t know that you wouldn’t know how to unsnap it and how to hook the other pieces on.  Also, in the manual, are instructions on how to clean the vacuum. So, it shows exactly what you can and can’t do when you’re cleaning the vacuum.

It shows what you can run under running water and what you can’t. And then it also gives you instructions for how often, for example, the little ones inside the canister needs to be cleaned. So, if you are winging it and you’re using it and you never follow the instructions, you might miss a few of these important steps.

Some Vacuums Have Two Warranties

And so, this is one of the first reasons why you should take a look at the user guide.  The warranty is all spelled out on the back page. Now, this particular vacuum doesn’t have just one warranty, it has two.

So, one covers the pieces of the vacuum and the other one covers the battery. And so if you thought it was all covered under one warranty, but you did not pay attention, when you go to activate that warranty, if anything should go wrong, they may say, “Do you have the proper information you need to supply us for this battery?”

“Well, no, I don’t have that information. I didn’t know it was a separate warranty.” So, you want to make sure that you know exactly what is being promised. So, there are no surprises later on.

Companies Spell Out the Warranties Up Front

Now, this is not to say that the company is trying to pull a fast one. What they’re doing is they’re spelling it right upfront. It’s in print, it’s inside every box. They’re being as forthright about it as possible.

And if you should ever lose this, you can always go online, and you can do a search for the product number, the name of the product and you can pull up the user guide.

Now on the back of this is sheet are little pictures of all the different pieces, and they have the name of those pieces and the part number of those pieces.

You Can Call in to Activate the Warranty

So if in the event, for any reason, at any time, you have to call and activate the warranty on the telephone, you can sound super smart and you can say, “Hey, I’m calling about the Wall Mount part 0701.” And then they can answer your questions. Or if you decide to buy a replacement, there it is right there.

Now its important to mention that on your receipt when you’re purchasing this product, either from a store, a big box store like Walmart, or Home Depot, or even if you buy it on Amazon, on the receipt itself, the serial number will be on the receipt.

Because sometimes when you activate the warranty, it’s going to say, “Show us that you bought this.” Show us this belongs to you. So, what you have to do is you have to say the serial number from the box. You want to save it on your owner’s guide. Maybe take a picture of it so that you have it in an electronic file where you can store this information electronically.

Keep the Guide Book Stored Somewhere in Case You Need it

And I’ll share with you an OCD secret of mine. When I get this book, I usually scan it where I take a picture of each of the pages with my phone and I store it inside an electronic file with the day that I registered it, I snapshot a picture of the receipt.

And now I have an inventory of all the products inside my cleaning business. So now I can look at a glance because we forget. How long ago was it that we bought that vacuum that we’ve been using?  Let me do a search.

You do a search by the name of the product and it pulls up in your database and you can see when and where you purchased it.  How much money you paid for it, you have the serial number, you have all the information that you need if you ever have to call in for a warranty.

There is a Whole Bunch of Information to Learn About Every Product

So, there are a whole bunch of pieces of information that are inside the user’s guide of all the different pieces of equipment that you buy. So stop for a second and realize that this is a part of your business, and it’s a way for you to save money because you’re not replacing things over and over and over again if they should break.

And if they should break, you have all the information you need to call in a warranty claim. So that is what you need to know about vacuum warranties and how to get the most use out of it.

And when it is applicable and when it is not. Because this user guide will tell you right up front if the vacuum is not used or is not under warranty if you use it for commercial purposes.

So, if you take it from house to house, to house, to house, it will say right here in the book, if it is, or if it is not under warranty under those circumstances. So as long as you follow all the rules by the manufacturer specifications, you should be good.Resources

These good karma links connect you to Amazon.com and affiliated sites that offer products or services that relate to today’s show. 

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