I've had a Dyson DC40 for 8 years now, I haven't had any problems with it. I would say it gets more than average usage. The only two things that were "broken" on it were the hose and this little wire harness (loom). I've noticed that the brush head spins intermittently, I checked and cleaned it thoroughly, but sometimes it still wouldn't spin. I decided to order this and the brush head unit. This item arrived first. This was a little tricky as there is no YouTube video specific to this model, but I followed the DC50 video to remove and replace this wiring harness. I found that my old one had worn down over time which resulted in the wire being cut. So my problem was sporadic. After putting everything together my Dyson worked like new. I was thinking about buying a new vacuum cleaner before this item came out, it saved me hundreds of dollars.