Dyson

In my garage I found a broken Dyson vacuum cleaner. All that was wrong was there was nothing to press the on/off switch. I stripped it far enough to be able to turn it on and check that it still worked, which it did.

Then I set about finding a replacement actuator. I discovered that Dyson stopped supplying spares for this model in 2008, and while plenty of companies had them listed, even with prices, none actually had any stock. Dyson will even give you a part exchange for your old model.

Then I came across Manchester Vacs, who had second hand ones available. For the grand cost of £1.99 I got a replacement, that not only worked but didn't look out of place as it had as many marks and scratches as the rest of the machine.

Of course Dyson was the man who moved his manufacturing to Malaysia and then told the government to protect manufacturing and to stop engineers taking their skills abroad.