Last January, I decided to cash in some Amazon Gift Cards and buy a new hand held vacuum. After doing a little research, I decided upon the Dirt Devil Kurv.
A family member owned one and seemed pleased and the reviews online seemed complimentary so I thought it was a safe bet. Plus, isn’t it so stylish!
Our main use of a hand held vacuum is for the kid’s to use it to clean up their messes. Especially for the messes after dinner! My first complaint, of course, was from our 10 year old daughter, who said the suction area wasn’t large enough. It is just a hole and our old Dust Buster had a wider suction area. So it was a little more time consuming for them to clean up their messes.
I do like that it is lightweight and seemed to hold a good charge. Even our then 2 year old could manuever it without much trouble.
My final straw. The filter. Our filter is gone and no one seems to know what happened or when it happened. I did notice when I would empty out the dust in the trash, sometimes the filter would go in the trash as well. What kind of company makes it that easy to accidentally throw out a key element! The working theory is that a good intentioned child or adult was emptying it and the filter went into the trash.
Obviously, since it had happened to me I should have warned the kids or Bryan. But I didn’t even think to do that since I’m usually the one who empties it.
So now the filter is gone and the vac is unusable since it is blowing OUT the dust instead of sucking it up. It has been gone for several months and we now have an item collection dust instead of vacuuming up dust! I’m now going to finally break down and buy $9 replacement filter so at least we can use it.
I’m not happy about it as a product shouldn’t be built so it is that easy to accidentially throw a vital piece, like a filter, out. Plus, it was not cheap. Regular price it is $69 but I was able to at least snag it on sale for $39. Currently, I saw one as low as $29 on Amazon…can’t imagine why the price is so low! ha ha!
I can’t recommend you buy this product…so what have you found to be a good hand held vaccum?
Update: Here’s the response from Dirt Devil after I emailed them about my problem. Apparently, they didn’t actually read my entire email because my problem was not a dirty filter it was with the design of their product and who really reads the owner’s manuals? Of course, there is a “No reply” email box. Ugh. Wonderful customer service.
Hello, Thank you for your recent e-mail. I am sorry to read of the situation As listed in the owners manual, the filter requires removing for cleaning the filter and to clean out the dirt cup. 3DN0980000 F17 FILTER KONE AND KURV $6.83 1DN0980000 FILTER ADAPTOR KURV $5.67 The part that you are inquiring about is available from the manufacturer by calling 1-800-321-1134, online at www.dirtdevil.com/shop, or inquire at the dealer(s) listed below.
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We have a Black & Decker handheld vacuum that I actually got at the Black and Decker outlet for $15 about 2 years ago and have had no problems with it whatsoever. It does wet and dry and it holds charge fairly well. It’s not as stylish looking as that one but we just keep ours in a closet that has an outlet. Hope that helps!
http://www.blackanddecker.com/ProductGuide/CategoryOverview.aspx?cPath=1499.2210
I would like to add on to Briana’s problem with the Kurv vacuum. I, too, somehow lost the filter. I had no idea it was even gone until I was trying to use it and it wasn’t sucking anything up. I found a new filter at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but when I got the filter, it WAS the F17 filter, but it WAS NOT the same size filter that came with the vacuum. I don’t know if the original one was wrong or what, but this little filter seems to just float around inside the vacuum, and now air is blowing out of the sides of the vacuum and it blows the stuff away that I’m trying to vacuum up. I found a generic filter at Walmart for another model of Dirt Devil that looked like more of the original size, but I still have the blowing out air problem. I’m not sure what else to do. I really liked the vacuum before all of these filter problems.
Delane – Same thing happened to us when I bought the replacement filter! I’m throwing mine out – Basically, this is now going to fill up the land fill. Ugh.
What happened is you lost the plastic piece that surrounds the filter and holds it in place. When you buy a replacement filter, all you get is the filter. What you’re missing is the filter adapter that holds that tiny little filter in place.
As noted in the article above, this is what you need to buy (and not throw out, even when replacing the filter):
1DN0980000 FILTER ADAPTOR KURV $5.67 The part that you are inquiring about is available from the manufacturer by calling 1-800-321-1134