More accurately, our vacuum doesn't suck any more. Well, that is, it still sucks, but not floors any more. The power head broke (the second time this replacement power head has broken, and in the same manner in which the original power head broke for the second time). It's clearly an inherent design flaw of this vacuum (a Fantom Lightning). After the first head died, we paid $90 for a refurbished replacement head; I'll be damned if I'll throw another $90 down the same hole. We'd decided we wanted to get a Dyson next time we replaced our vacuum, probably a DC11 Full Gear; but we sure weren't planning on replacing the Fantom this soon, and certainly can't afford one now. Best we could possibly do on a Dyson right now is a new DC08 from SuperPawn for $299, if we had $299 to spend, which we don't.
Oh, frell.
We'll probably have to go with some kinda cheap-ass piece-of-shit stick vacuum like a Eureka or something as a stopgap until we can afford to replace it with something decent.