As wheelchair rookie I had to discover from the start that the description technical aid probably results from calling out loud for first aid if you are using them.
The manufacturers of technical aids, especially for us wheelchair users, seem to be convinced that from the moment you can’t walk any more you are getting deaf as well.
It is hardly believable, but even brand new wheelchairs clatter and creak like an old pushcart.
My favourite example is the anti-tipper of my wheelchair, I just call it wheelchair rattle.
How can you stick a metal pin through a tube and then put a wheel on it on the right and on the left without additionally fixing it?! Furthermore the part gets constantly deformed.
Then with the wheelchair across the pavement, and the joints become an acoustic speed indicator. Click clack, click clack…
I have e-mailed to the German manufacturer of my wheelchair and addressed the personnel directly on rehab fairs. At least a field technician of the company came to my home for repair and adjustment of my wheelchair.
He removed the biggest deficits of my “new wheelchair“, but in the end nobody was really interested in my “blah blah”.
The company Sopur (Sunrise Medical) allegedly doesn’t have any field technicians, so you are solely dependent on the “competence” of the medical supply store staff where you got the wheelchair from.
If it is even a wheelchair in re-use, i.e. a “makeover” used chair, then have a good trip!
I know a lady who has a purple wheelchair with red tyres which she got in a place 75 km away when she was in rehab at that time. She needs to be pushed outside, the chair is in my opinion not possible to move by herself.
This medical supply store specialist drives regularly to Frankfurt, exchanges parts and adjusts “professionally” her wheelchair. No other medical supply store may do anything with the wheelchair, this guy has sort of an exclusive screwing right.
These services are usually well paid by the health insurance. Wouldn’t it be cheaper in the end to provide a new wheelchair from a medical supply store in Frankfurt?
I see how bad the wheelchair is set up and what is defect, but can’t do anything against it. This guy can do what he wants. I wouldn’t imply bad faith, but who knows as pedestrian how significant the performance of a wheelchair changes if you turn the wrong screw. The lady doesn’t know any other wheelchair except for her own and doesn’t have any comparison!
In Austria each wheelchair has to undergo a technical inspection once a year, we don’t have such a thing!
Why not???
When I asked in October at the Sopur booth if it wouldn’t be possible to help my neighbour informally I was told that the wheelchair would have to be sent to the factory.
How do they think this could be done???
I don’t want to let anyone screw on her wheelchair for insurance reasons. The chair is almost falling apart anyway.
Hello company Sopur, can anybody hear me???
Meanwhile I have the 5th anti-tipper in 2,5 years on my wheelchair.
Translator BL
