Blimey, relax guys, I don't live on here! Been busy with godchildren and Alton Towers visits so not much leisure time! Sent it back to the suppliers, their response was that they couldn't get the parts to fix it so they refunded in full and I bought a replacement elsewhere.
They didn't say what the problem was so unfortunately can't enlighten you there. The unit was an ex-demo and I now wonder if perhaps it was faulty from the start.......I have replaced it with an MC420, so a smaller version, which is actually performing much better.....more powerful, better suction and also quite a bit noisier.
I don't know enough about motors, capacitors etc to guess at a cause....my thought that it might be a capacitor issue was based on googling.......but interestingly virtually nothing available on the www about problems with Microclene units which can only be a good sign.
Cheers
Chris