Some background about my vacuum. It is a Shark Apex Vacuum (model AZ1501) I just purchased it in May of this year. For the first couple months it worked so well, the carpet features would essentially self propel the vacuum and it was really good at bringing up imbedded dirt and hair! I mainly got it for cleaning up pet hair off of my thicker carpeted areas and hardwoods.

Recently I’ve noticed my vacuum isn’t working as well as it has in the past. The soft brush roller light indicator is green when I’m using the vacuum but it’s no longer moving with the other brush roller. When I activate carpet mode it makes a godawful high pitched skipping noise, almost like what a broken belt sounds like.

I’ve deep cleaned all accessible parts of the rollers and filters with no luck. I’ve isolated the issue to the soft roller brush (black striped) located at the very front of the motorized head. There is a button on the side of the motorized head that allows the soft brush roller to pop out to clean it, but that’s all I am able to easily adjust without special tools. The vacuum is essentially useless and just pushes around dirt and debris without a properly working roller.

I’ve fixed rollers and belts on several old vacuums I’ve had over the years but the mechanics on this one are very hidden and there’s not much I am able to easily see. The screws are a couple different sizes of a weird star pattern and are burrowed deep into the plastic housing where the brush rollers sit. They obviously don’t want amateurs tinkering with this model lol.

The vacuum is still under some “5 year limited warranty” but after several video calls with customer service and to no surprise, this issue isn’t covered under the warranty. The customer service rep quoted me $90 to replace the entire motorized head of the vacuum which I’m not sure is worth it since that’s almost half the price of a new one.

I’m a little frustrated with the company since this vacuum has had minimal use (1/week) since May and this soft brush roller issue essentially renders the vacuum useless for cleaning floors/carpets. I’m wondering if there’s something different I could say to customer service to get them to fix or replace this vacuum. I did not disclose to them that I tinkered with it.

Does anyone have suggestions on where to go from here? I’m fairly handy and could try and get into the mechanics if it could be a simple belt fix. I don’t think it’s worth buying a $90 part when I could switch to a different vacuum altogether with less future headaches.

I bought a shark apex vacuum (model AX1000W) on facebook marketplace and I noticed that the soft roller doesn't seem to spin at all. I suspect that the belt that connects the hard bristle roller to the soft roller may have snapped. Is this a fair assumption or is there a different known issue that could cause this? Where should I purchase the belt from if this is the problem? (a product page link would be preferred as I had trouble finding it online) Links to helpful resources about my problem are listed below.

Video of my problem

Belt that I believe may need replacing (not my exact model, but I think it's a similar concept)