We have a problem with our vacuum

This actually could be said about every single vacuum John and I have owned as a couple. I don't know if he had this same problem with his first wife or not.

See, we have cats. When we first hooked up, I had two, he had two. It was like the Brady Bunch, only with cats and no Alice. We are down to three at the moment, but they have a lot of hair. Which they seem to shed at an extraordinary pace. Which leads me to the vacuum situation. Cause even though we do have cats everywhere, I don't like our house to look like there are cats everywhere. We vacuum frequently, the floor and the furniture. Sometimes the bedspread, something only another cat owner would understand.

Our vacuums seem to crap out after only a couple of years. We buy good ones, but they do.not.last. Period. This prompted us to have wood floors installed in the SF condo. Made it much easier to manage the entire hair thing. Of course we had cleaning help then so like I knew anything about how the cat hair removal worked. But I digress.

When we moved to St. Louis, we bought a decent size house with a lot of carpet. Translation, lots of vacuuming. I wanted a brand new industrial strength vacuum. I did some research as I am wont to do and was drawn to the Dyson vacuums. Mainly I liked the story about James Dyson, the pitch was top notch. It seemed like his vacuum problems were similar to ours. The picture showed an honest looking chap (I think he is British) and I liked how he bucked all vacuum society to come up with his own patented design, a vacuum that will not lose it's suck over time (I think this is something to strive for). Plus the vacuums came in cool colors like yellow and purple. And finally, the pièce de résistance.....one of the vacuums was specifically geared toward folks with pets. It was named The Animal.

SOLD.

Fast forward 28 months. It doesn't work anymore. When turned on, it instead makes a very loud screeching sound. The hose is split as in broken. And the thingie ma job won't turn on The Animal attachment.

We took it in to Best Buy for service. Inexplicably, we bought an extended warranty, probably due to the fact we have such poor luck with vacuums. Best Buy kept it for about a week and allegedly fixed it. Got it home, plugged it in and same problem - loud screeching noise, busted hose, etc. There is no evidence they touched it.

John had taken it in the first time so I took it in the 2nd time. This is part of our good cop/bad copy routine. We often switch roles and I got to be the bad cop this time. Not much of a stretch because I was very pissed off at the situation, not to mention the failure to fix it properly.

So I wheeled it over to the service counter and proceeded with my story. The guy stared at me without expression. I told him we needed to get the vacuum fixed again. Quickly. I don't think he got my sense of urgency, probably because he doesn't live in a house with fur covered floors. For emphasis I pointed at the vacuum......."you are looking at a $500 piece of crap right here." And that is when he perked up, realizing he had a nut case on his hands. He promised to "rush" the repairs, 3 days and it would be done.

That was on April 17th. We have talked to Best Buy five times since then but have no defininitive answers. The good cop has resumed handling due to the fact he doesn't want me to stroke out(I am guessing). We have been told they are "waiting on parts."

I know one thing for sure. This vacuum still sucks.