BUSINESS ETHICS:

HOOVER_®, CANADA

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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:

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.

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