Electrolux sucks.  I know that's what vacuum cleaners are supposed to do, but I mean this in a negative sense.  Here's why.

We recently bought what we believed was a brand-new Electrolux vacuum cleaner.  The reason we chose this brand was that the vacuum cleaner we were replacing was a sturdy and effective machine that had served us well for more than 20 years.  Electrolux (or what presumes to be Electrolux) also received top ratings from Consumer Reports.

The new machine, as is often the case, came with only one replacement bag, and the store where we bought it was out of stock.  Thus, we went to the local Electrolux outlet to purchase bags.  To our dismay, we were told that the machine we had purchased was not made by Electrolux; it was, in essence, a Eureka vacuum cleaner.  (That would explain why it isn't as good as our old Electrolux.)  Furthermore, the Electrolux outlet neither provided bags for it nor serviced it.

According to the Electrolux representative, a Swedish company (apparently the company that established and originally sold Electrolux) bought back the Electrolux name from Electrolux in the U.S. a few years ago (for a tidy sum that the Electrolux biggies could not resist).  The Swedish company subsequently bought Eureka and promptly put the Electrolux name on Eureka vacuum cleaners.  Thus, if one buys an "Electrolux" today, it is not made by what used to be Electrolux but by Eureka, now a Swedish-owned company.

Currently, the only true Electrolux vacuum cleaners bear the "Aerus Electrolux" label, and only they have the quality that was originally associated with Electrolux.  Under the agreement of sale of the name, in 25 years Electrolux must go by simply "Aerus" and may not use the Electrolux name.

It is too late to return our faux-Electrolux vacuum cleaner to the store, and we are stuck with purchasing bags by mail order (at premium prices) from the outfit that calls itself Electrolux but is really Eureka.  Who knows what we do if the machine needs servicing after our service contract with the retail store where we bought it expires?  Perhaps we'll have to ship it to Sweden.

If it comes to that, however, it will probably be better all around to buy another vacuum cleaner.  You can bet it won't be an Electrolux or a Eureka – or even an Aerus Electrolux.  We think we've been had by the brand-name machinations of both companies.  Any company that sells its name to an inferior manufacturer is not to be trusted, and any company that puts a once-respected name on an inferior product deserves to be exposed and driven out of business.