A carpet sweeper more effective than a vacuum cleaner (Bissell Perfect Sweep)

Member Name: Shez80

Product:	Bissell Perfect Sweep
Date:	23/06/09 (122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Picks up stubborn sock fluff effortlessly, cheap, not heavy and bulky to use, just brilliant!

Disadvantages: None

We have a plain cream carpet and I am forever going round picking up black bits of fluff from my husband's socks. As much as they're washed, the carpet still attracts the fluff and it drives me insane! My black socks don't leave black fluff everywhere but every pair of his do! And no matter how many times I went over them with the vacuum cleaner they would not budge. People always say don't get a cream carpet if you have a dog but nobody ever told me not to get a cream carpet if you have a husband!

When visiting my grandparents one day they had bought a Bissell Perfect Sweep carpet sweeper and my grandma was raving about it. It just reminded me of a really old fashioned beige carpet sweeper my grandma used to have when I was a child. Bless her, there's people raving about a Dyson Ball and my grandma's raving about a carpet sweeper!

So my grandma got this carpet sweeper out and proceeded to show me what it could do. It was truly unremarkable: it swept the carpet!! She told me she had bought another make of carpet sweeper which wasn't very good so she took it back and replaced it with the Bissell Perfect Sweep, which she claimed was amazing and that we should buy one. Being someone who has been brought up in a generation of technology forever evolving I couldn't see what use I could make of a carpet sweeper. That is until I thought of my husband!

My grandma let us borrow the carpet sweeper to see how it would handle my husband's sock fluff before we went out and bought one. So as soon as I got home I put it to the test on our carpet which looked like a rolled out, flattened Dalmatian! And I was so surprised when it actually picked up the fluff on the first attempt, I didn't even have to keep going over and over the same spot. Both my husband and I were so shocked that something so basic that didn't even require plugging in could perform so well. I rang my grandma straight away to tell her how impressed we were!

It's such a basic piece of equipment which looks just like your average, dare I say old fashioned, carpet sweeper, It consists of a base that's 9.5 inch x 10.5 inch with two quite large brush rollers in the centre underneath, wheels down either side and brushes at all four corners. It has a long handle which slots together in 4 sections and a comb which attaches to the handle to clean the brushes underneath. It then has two compartments underneath, one at the front of the rollers and one at the back which collects all the dust/fluff. And that's it!

We gave back my grandma's carpet sweeper and went out and bought one for ourselves. We bought ours from Argos for around £25 which seemed like such a bargain for something that did a better job than a vacuum cleaner! We now use our Bissell Perfect Sweep on a daily basis and use our vacuum cleaner (which now just seems so big, heavy and bulky) once a week just for a deeper clean due to the suction, even though our vacuum cleaner (which is a good make and only about 5 year old) doesn't seem to pick up as much as the carpet sweeper does.

We've recommended this to all our friends (who had the same initial impression of it as I did) who were amazed after showing them two full compartments of dust/fluff after using the carpet sweeper on a carpet that looked clean to begin with. And I no longer have to go round picking up bits of sock fluff, the Bissell Perfect Sweep does the job for me.

I would say the only fault I can think of, which doesn't affect the performance, is that the top section of the handle sometimes comes apart from the rest of the handle when lifting it from its home in the kitchen, no matter how hard you push the two together. But that's just nit picking really, it doesn't take away how amazing and effective it actually is. It still amazes me how good the carpet looks after using the carpet sweeper and after using the vacuum cleaner I usually have to go over it with the sweeper to pick up the sock fluff!

I can't recommend the Bissell Perfect Sweep enough. It's small enough to stick in a corner and takes less effort than getting the vacuum cleaner out all the time, but in my opinion gives far better results. Who needs an expensive vacuum cleaner when you've got a Bissell Perfect Sweep!

Summary: A must have accessory

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