by falco peregrinus » 21 May 2014, 14:57
In my opinion, the ability to reprogram the chair EXACTLY how you want it, YOURSELF, is mandatory in considering purchase of ANY chair - because very few dealers/ techs/ manufacturers seem to be capable of programming/ producing a chair that is adequately responsive to joystick commands.
Secondmost important consideration is availability of parts and expertise to fix problems. That's the real stumbling block in getting a chair, because most wheelchair techs are totally out of their depth if your problems are any more serious than a flat battery or bald tyres. And very few of them have adequate programming tools either, let alone training to use them correctly.
As a general rule of thumb, the heavier the chair, the more punishment it can take without failures and the better it will handle conditions between home and the shop, rather than only being usable at home and at shop.
Make sure the chair you get can take decent-size batteries, so you can be guaranteed of decent range. There are a LOT of chairs around now that can only take small or medium size batteries, and you can't physically fit in a decent capacity battery. The bigger the better, because capacity correlates with range.
I've never had anything to do with Otto Bock chairs, but the fact that they are German built appeals to me, because of the reputation of German engineering.
You're used to mid-wheel. Rear-wheel handles VERY differently from midwheel. Not all wheelies can adapt from one to the other. I was a dedicated rear-wheel user until circumstances forced a mid-wheel on me. I managed to adapt, and now I would never go back to a rear-wheel chair - BUT THAT SAID, I don't know of a decent mid-wheel chair in current production that I would consider worth getting at any price. I would like a spare midwheel chair to replace my current spare chair (which is a rear-wheel that has had it's day), but my choice for replacement is one identical to my primary chair if I can find one second-hand one in really good condition. (And they do come up on eBay, and often at a really good price, but so far they've all been interstate, and freight is a killer, so I still haven't bought one.)
Is your present midwheel 6 wheels on the ground, or 4 on the ground and two in the air? Because a lot of the 6 on the ground midwheels drive their owners bananas because they keep getting hung up all the time, with the drive wheel losing traction. To some extent that's a matter of adjustment of tension in the wheel setup, but there are limits. Limits which are less in a 4 wheels on the ground midwheel, and absent altogether in a rear wheel drive chair.
The choice of chair is more important than the dealer you get it from, because dealers shut up shop and their tech staff leave and get themselves a better job somewhere else. Meanwhile, you're stuck with the chair. Providing parts are readily available for it, you can probably get the mechanic at the local garage to do at least as good a job as the average wheelchair tech, providing you can convince him that there's nothing in the chair alien to his experience apart from the programming of the controller. And like I said at the beginning, to my mind the ability to reprogram the chair YOURSELF is mandatory, so the mechanic's lack of experience in wheelchair programming shouldn't matter a damn. And anyway, there's heaps of expert advice on this forum to help you if you do have troubles.
Personally, I've got a Pride. The engineering design of it leaves a lot to be desired, and Pride themselves leave a lot to be desired as well. They remind me a lot of IBM and HP in their arrogance. I like my Pride (it's something like 8 years old now), but I don't love it. Like I said, mechanically it leaves a lot to be desired - but it's simple to program, simple to repair, and parts are easy to get. So I can maintain it myself, and that keeps me independent of all those incompetent wheelchair techs that don't know dick about what they're doing.
Falco.