Adventures in splurging for a “nice” vacuum cleaner – The Shark that melted

Our Shark NV803 Duoclean -- I call him "Melty"

If I were to describe my history with vacuum cleaners, it would be "struggle". We have no long-haired pets (unless you count children) and we don't have a ton of carpets. If I'm being honest, we don't use the vacuum near as often as we probably should. What I mean to say is that we're not really putting these things through their paces or performing stress tests so there's no reason it should be such a struggle.

Still, you get what you pay for and all the ~100 vacuum cleaners and used models and Goodwill castoffs were a pain. They jam up easily and have varying levels of poor performance that my wife and I were sick of. We did our research and found what seemed to be a good model that came highly recommended, had tons of great ratings, and a good set of features. At the least, I hoped that spending more than double the price of our most expensive vacuum to date would be a win.

TL;DR – Nope!

The bits that look like dirt buildup are actually deformed plastic

Is that a gill?

Nah, just the roller belt popping out to say hello

Look, I'm sure they're great most of the time. The reviews sure seem to suggest so after all… but in the end having a vacuum cleaner eat itself in less than a year is a tad bit concerning. None of the cheap-o ones I've ever owned had problems with melting themselves, but I suppose I should give the Shark points for style: it started by melting the internal plastics of the roller and THEN it melted its way right out of the side casing (that belt is still in great shape though, so props for that!).

Let's be fair: stuff is defective sometimes and there's no point in getting bent out of shape if you get a lemon… assuming they actually take care responsibility for it.

7-year warranty!

The one I bought: a Shark NV803 DuoClean
(See online!)

I'm new to Shark and didn't know what to expect, but the "7 year warranty – OMG!" was reassuring. I went through the trouble of registering (I normally wouldn't, but it was required) and called the phone number (that's suspicious… why couldn't I do this online?) and the very polite lady took my information and quoted me $89 to send a replacement part.

Wait, what?

Long-story short, the warranty only applies to the motor apparently – self consuming rollers is not their problem.

There were several things on the table at this point: going to my credit card for the auto-extended warranty, send a complaint letter to Shark directly, see if it's too late to do a credit card chargeback, etc. Instead, I contacted Amazon support to see what options they provided and it paid off! They offered a full refund and gave me a shipping label to send the unit back.

To be clear, Amazon didn't have to do this and I would never suggest you can expect the same, but credit to them for handling the situation. The bottom line and the point that I'm trying to make is that you might want to think twice about Shark vacuums. Maybe I got a lemon or maybe their reputation for quality is wildly over-stated, but one thing that's for sure, their warranty isn't going to help you if something goes wrong (unless it's the very specific part of the vacuum they actually cover I suppose).