My trusty Oreck vacuum cleaner broke a few months back. I called Oreck to see if it might be covered under warranty. After asking for the serial number, the helpful customer service representative replied that it was indeed covered. I just needed to bring the vacuum to an Oreck store to have the part replaced. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring the vacuum in until today, and the vacuum store manager proceeded to rain on my parade …

“Sorry. It’s not covered under warranty,” he said, after looking at a date code underneath the serial number.

“But the Oreck customer service rep said that it would be covered,” I replied, hopefully.

“No. This vacuum was built in 1999. The warranty is only good for three years,” he responded, in an almost convincing matter of fact manner.

I knew that it had only been a few months since I spoke to the Oreck rep, not a few years. But I wasn’t in the mood to get in a heated discussion with the store manager.

“Alright then,” I said. “Just give me the part.”

“Huh? You only want the part?”

The vacuum store manager looked up with both surprise and disappointment.

“Yep. Just the part.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep.”

He dutifully shuffled off into the back of the store to fetch the the part and quickly returned with a $30 piece of plastic.

“That’s it?” he asked as he placed the part down on the counter.

“That’s it.”

I guess most folks around here these days are content to drop off their vacuums to be fixed, no matter the price.

Once I got home, it took all of fifteen minutes to disassemble the vacuum, blow it out with compressed air, and reassemble it with the new part.

Fifteen minutes that probably saved me a hundred bucks.

So what got me off my duff to get the Oreck fixed today?

Well … woot.com is one of the first stops in my daily routine, and they just happened to be running a sweet woot with refurbished iRobot Roomba Discoverys. Alas, I didn’t get in on the woot, but it did inspire me to finally get that old vacuum fixed …