Unsafe wheelchair design

[ConantheLibrarian]

I have just had an unpleasant experience with a new electric wheelchair.

I use an electric wheelchair indoors and outside. I like to have 2 wheelchairs despite the cost. I live on my own and am not ready to employ careers so I need a spare wheelchair in case one conks out. I also use one wheelchair for outdoors only to avoid bringing mud onto my hall and bedroom carpet. Recently I had to replace my old spare wheelchair so I ordered an I-Go Crest CSS (careco.co.uk/i-go-crest-css... from CareCo. An engineer came round to assemble it for me and straight away I spotted a problem. The base of the wheelchair protrudes from under the seat (i.e. the edge of the seat does not align with the edge of the base, plus you have the foldup footplate which sticks out even when folded up and so makes the base stick out even more ). This makes it difficult to transfer onto or from it. I tried to use it for the first time today but fell over when trying to transfer. My living room has a hard, shiny wood floor and every time I tried to get up onto my hands and knees I slipped. Luckily, I have an alarm pendant and I was able to get 2 friends round to help me up after spending an hour on the floor.

I am not posting this to get sympathy. I would just like to know if anyone has had similar problems with a wheelchair. In my opinion, there is a clear design fault with the chair, at least as far as people with balance problems are concerned. My current indoor chair has a perfect alignment between the edge of the seat and the base and so did the old chair which I used to use outdoors. I was surprised to see this new chair with what I consider to be a serious design fault, which you can't spot from looking at pictures on CareCo's website. I don't think such a wheelchair should be on sale, certainly not without some kind of warning.

[Cuds]

Hi,Sorry to hear about your experience with this wheelchair - I'm glad you were not seriously hurt. From what I know of this chair, it has a very short wheelbase and the centre of gravity of the seating is set back so the front does extend beyond the seat as does the footrest. My understanding is that to overcome transfer issues the seat swivels so you transfer off the side of the chair - did it not have this option or did the sales person not go through the handover instructions with you? I would be interested to know if you don't mind.

Many thanks.

[ConantheLibrarian in reply to Cuds]

Thank you for your reply. Your comment about the swivel seat was extremly useful. After your message I tried to transfer using the swivel mechanism but found it difficult. First you have to think where to position the wheelchair you are transferring from. Second, once you have transferred on to the swivel seat you have to swivel back to the front so you can drive the wheelchair. I found this difficult-you can only swivel the chair round easily when you are not sitting in it!

The lessons I take from this is one, that if you have more severe balance problems like me this kind of wheelchair is not suitable and two, if possible go and try out a new wheelchair in a show room before you buy it. I was looking at the product manual for a different wheelchair, the I-Go Zenith Pro, and under the heading, 'Transfers' it says, "Safely reduce the distance between your power wheelchair and the object you are transferring onto". This not possible if your wheelchair has a protruding base and I still think, despite the swivel seat, that the I-Go Crest is badly designed.

[Cuds in reply to ConantheLibrarian]

Fair point and I would always advise people to trial something before they buy it when it comes to wheelchairs or any aid/adaptation. I hope you can get your money back as the chair is not fit for purpose for you?Good luck.

[wobblybee]

🤔The link you gave failed

[ConantheLibrarian in reply to wobblybee]

Thanks for pointing this out. The following link is for fixed base powerchairs sold by CareCo. The wheelchair I was talking about is called the I-Go Crest CSS careco.co.uk/powerchairs/fi...

[PatsyIpswich]

Thanks for sharing.