Now we can clean house

We won’t be cleaning like Scotty for the upcoming election but for real with our late 2018 Dyson V10 vacuum cleaner. It’s trigger switch has been dodgy for a while and on Monday it gave up completely when I was almost finished cleaning the car after our recent trip.

Nobody in Toowoomba claimed to do service for Dyson cleaners. A visit to the Dyson website revealed a service centre in Brisbane and a helpline. A call to the latter elicited an offer for a part to replace a large chunk of the machine that would include the handle and trigger assembly. That was going to cost about $200.

I’d already searched in Google and found numerous mentions of the problem along with links to places where I could buy a trigger for about $18 and YouTube videos explaining the process which was described as a bit intricate and tricky. Knowing that if I wrecked something in the process of fixing it I could still buy the official solution I decided there was little to lose by trying to fix it.

Amazon had more than one listing for triggers. For a little more cost and a longer wait I could have had one that claimed to be reinforced (why has Dyson not done that I wonder). When I was looking on Thursday afternoon Amazon was offering to deliver a trigger for $18 plus delivery and to have it to me by Saturday (today). I ordered it Tuesday afternoon and it was here shortly after lunch today. That suggests to me that there is sufficient demand to make it worthwhile to hold stock. Dyson evidently has a design problem since the problem seems to persist for newer models.

With the piece in hand I started following the video instructions I had found on Thursday. A few minutes into the 8 minute video (longer since I was following along) I realised that the internals of the V11 being demonstrated were similar, but not identical, to those in our V10. I found another longer (30 minute) video that did demonstrate the V10 and followed that.

They were right. There were some tricky bits where force was needed to take things apart or wires needed to be bent and fed through awkward passages. Eventually I reached the trigger which was broken where the illustrations on the web suggested they commonly break. Once there, replacement was easy.

Putting things back together was quicker than taking them apart but no less tricky. I was relieved when the battery went back into place and pressing the trigger had our V10 humming again.

Based on that experience, it may not be economically viable to repair/replace the trigger unless you are prepared to do it yourself. The cost of the part is minimal and the required tools are common but a technician’s time (the minimum hour charge) would make the official Dyson fix with a whole new section look more attractive. I wonder how many people simply trash the device and buy a new one when confronted with trigger failure and no local service.