I wanted to buy a Dyson V8 Absolute vacuum cleaner, which appeared to drop in price around Black Friday but went back up shortly after. I decided to wait until after Christmas in the hope of benefiting from a further price drop. But which V8 model should I buy? Out there is the Absolute, the Animal, the Absolute Total Clean and Absolute Pro.
John Lewis has been advertising the Absolute (a Which? best-buy vacuum cleaner) for £519, and the Absolute Pro for £349.99 – a price difference of £169.01. All over the internet are massive price differences, even on Dyson’s own website. I emailed John Lewis and asked it to explain the difference between the two as I could not decipher any from Googling it from every angle. I also emailed Dyson.
John Lewis phoned two days later to say that the Absolute has a better overall performance, though they were very vague as to exactly what the difference was.
Spurred on by this, I found that the best price for the V8 Absolute was Donaghy Bros at £388.99, and so ordered one last week. Too late for me but, lo and behold, Dyson emailed me on 31 December to inform me that “the only difference is the colour of the wand”.
DS, Bethnal Green, London
So you paid more for the pleasure of cleaning up with a yellow wand? We usually warn readers here that Black Friday deals and prices are rarely all they are cracked up to be – and this is a good example, not helped by the confusingly similar names of the various models.
Dyson tells us: “We sell a range of vacuum cleaners to suit different needs and are always happy to guide people towards the right machine either online, by telephone or in store. Black Friday and Boxing Day are key promotion periods and prices therefore fluctuate – Dyson does not control the pricing of our retailers and it would be illegal to do so.”
Meanwhile, the Pro seems to have mysteriously disappeared from the John Lewis website.
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