Pay for carpet clean or buy a Vax?

[MissAtomicBomb1]

I usually have our sofas & carpets cleaned about once a year. They could do with freshening up right now. Usually costs around £100
Just wondering whether I'd be better off investing in a Vax or similar?
Are they any good? Do they remove stains or am o better sticking with a professional cleaner? The last one we had wasn't that great and just filled his machine with hot water from our tap which I'm guessing is what I'd put in a Vax!

Hopeful bump!

We’ve always hired a rug doctor in the past and cleaned carpets ourselves. Finally bought a vax a month or so ago and it’s brilliant! Better than the rug doctor, smaller and we’ve used it a few times to spot clean spills and muddy paw prints. I would recommend one. If you buy it directly from Vax it’s on offer, plus you get a free steam cleaner. Reviews look rubbish but you can always sell it.

I've got a cylinder one (20+ years old), and it is HARD WORK doing the carpets. Consequently they don't get done very often, definitely not once a year.
I've wondered whether the upright one would be easier to use.

Ooh that's interesting, thank you.
We hired a rug doctor a few years back and wasn't overly impressed. Glad to hear the vax is better.

I'd say it depends on a few things - mainly how dirty / type of fabric. I bought a vax and I'd say I had limited success. It's not great for proper stains like dried in tea and coffee on light coloured & textured pile wool. (DS1 bedroom 🥴)Good for general dirt on non-textured hallway rug & making things smell fresh. Probably would work better if I used it more frequently. Cost in the price of the carpet cleaning liquid- it seems to get through the solution quite rapidly.

My vax is great for spot cleaning and upholstery. No way I'd try and do a full carpet with it. Would take an age.

Buy a vax, definitely.

We bought a Vax 'Rapid Power Revive Carpet Cleaner' a couple of months ago as it was £60 off and it is AMAZING. It's one of the lower priced ones and it brought our carpets up like new, including a few really stubborn, old stains in dc2's bedroom. We've also done all of the car upholstery and carpets and our office chairs.

Loads of Vax are on offer right now, I just googled. The one we got is down to £129 in lots of places and the one with a free steamer (a higher priced one) is £100 off!

You definitely won't regret it.

I think the one we bought was reduced to £180 with the free steamer. It’s so easy to use - forwards and back like a hoover. Obviously takes a little longer as you can’t do it really fast! And you need to fill it up/empty it. We had a huge stubborn tea stain on a light beige carpet and it took 3 spot cleans to remove. I think because each time it got wet it disappeared. Carpets look like new!

We have a Bissel carpet cleaner and it is better than the Vax version we had before. Paid about £180 for it in the sale.

We use it regularly for carpets and sometimes for sofas. It gets dried hot chocolate out of our cream carpet, and deals with mud and grime.

Get one that can use hot water rather than cold. IME the cheap bulk bottles of carpet cleaner from Screwfix are just as good as the Vax/Bissel versions but much much cheaper!

Depends on your carpets, home use machines are not supposed to be used on wool carpets