BUSINESS
ETHICS:
HOOVER®, CANADA

Sponsored link.

Suggestions:
We recommend that potential purchasers of vacuum cleaners and other
appliances be extremely cautious when evaluating Hoover®
as a potential supplier. The company has an excellent reputation, built up over
decades, for producing solid, reliable products. But their warranty may not be
particularly helpful in your location if your machine needs repairs.

Our experience:
A Canadian staff member associated with this website and who lives in
Kingston ON was in need of a new vacuum cleaner. He scanned the Hoover Canada
web site and found a list of "Hoover Authorized Service Dealers" on their
web site at:
http://www.hoover.ca/ It listed two service dealers in his locality: F.W.
Black Ltd. and Montgomery Electronics. On the basis of Hoover's
reputation for quality and the local availability of service, he purchased a
Hoover vacuum cleaner. Within two months, the internal belt broke. The machine
was still under the manufacturer's warranty.
He contacted the first "service" dealer and found that they only repaired
machines that had been purchased from themselves. This Hoover had been purchased
from Future Shop, and so the dealer refused
to repair the machine. He phoned the second "service" dealer and found that they
no longer repaired Hoover equipment. They were surprised that Hoover still
included them in their list of service dealers.
On 2004-JUL-12 he sent an E-mail to their "contact us" section of their web
site for service at:
http://www.hoover.ca/ and received a pleasant and prompt, but not
particularly helpful, response. Their nearest service facilities who can fix his
machine are in Belleville and Brockville, ON. He was faced with two options:
 | To drive the vacuum cleaner to one of these cities and return later to
pick it up. This involves four trips of about 45 minutes each. |
 | To package the vacuum cleaner up and ship it to one of these cities for
repair. |
Instead, he went to F.W. Black Ltd. locally, purchased a pair of belts using
his own money, and installed them himself.
He complained to Hoover about the inaccurate entries in their web site and
asked that their listing of "service" dealers be modified to indicate that F.W.
Black Ltd. only repaired appliances sold by themselves, and Montgomery
Electronic no longer serviced Hoover vacuum cleaners. Over two months have
passed since his Email. The listing of "service" dealers has not been modified.

Recommendations:
We recommend that if you are considering purchasing a Hoover appliance that
you check out their list of "service" dealers and make certain that they will
honor the Hoover warranty.

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Copyright © 2004 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
Originally posted: 2004-SEP-21
Latest update: 2004-SEP-21
Author: B.A. Robinson

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