the joys of vacuum shopping

This is the story of a vacuum cleaner, or actually several vacuum cleaners. Back in the day, Eric and I both had vacuum cleaners. We joined households and he kindly allowed me to keep mine (possibly a mistake?) and we got rid of his. He had a canister vac, mine was an Eureka upright. That vacuum died shortly later. Eric prefers canister vacs and we had quite a bit of hardwood floors in our last house. We had a vacuum demoed at our house and loved it, but not the price. Enter next player, vacuum player number 2. Since we couldn't afford the cadillac vacuum cleaner, we opted for a Hoover canister vac available at Costco. This one worked well overall. It was a bit tricky to get bags, though. You couldn't hop over to your nearest hardware store or Wal Mart but either had to go to the Hoover store or order on-line. Jack, age 12 at the time, started vacuuming as one of his chores and several times neglected to tell us that we needed new bags (which was a PITA). Jack was also not very kind and gentle to the vacuum as he was rushing to get his job done and the vacuum broke - where the head joined on to the wand, the plastic snapped. Enter vacuum number 3. Since we didnt' want to pay an arm and a leg and also didn't want to buy a vacuum cleaner that would make us really mad if it were broken, we got a Dirt Devil bagless vacuum. After our experience with bags with the Hoover, bagless seemed perfect. Then the belt broke. Then it didn't do a good job. Then the switch to make it stand up broke. Okay, lesson learned, right? So my sister got an Oceanblue Vacuum and loved it. Rainbows are essentially the same. Enter vacuum number 4. We couldn't afford the full price of a Rainbow but found a less expensive one on ebay - a floor model. We nervously ordered it and were very excited about it. We used it. It was so great. Then it stopped after one hallway. The guy who sold it to us offered to fix it free (including free shipping). I had since read some Rainbow reviews which are very mixed - love them, hate them. But we got it fixed anyway, thinking if it worked, we'd be out only time, not money. We got it back. Two weeks ago, I used it and it worked great. It did get hot, but it was fine. Eric used it today and it stopped working ... again. It is packed in its box to be returned. So now we have three vacuums in our house and none of them work. We still want a canister vac because Eric prefers those and they're good when you have a mix of hard wood and carpet. So today, I run to Sears in between work and nap-time and we pick up a Kenmore Canister vacuum. They have reasonably good reviews on-line. My favorite were the Miele vacuums but they're twice the cost of the Kenmore ones. Also, a lot of people love their Dyson's but I've read on-line that they end up in the repair shop frequently because of clogged filters, etc. So now we have a not too expensive Kenmore canister vacuum from Sears (you buy bags and do repairs there) which I pray continues working for a very long time and that this will be the end of the vacuum saga. Who knew vacuums could be so stressful? Welcome to being a grownup.