Bruno Independent Living Aids

I use the stairlift four times a day going up and down and since I got it, I’m not sequestered to the first floor anymore. I'm disabled from a spinal injury and I had a massive fusion, so it’s very hard for me to walk upstairs. I can do one or two, but there are 17 stairs to go up, plus the landing. So, the stairlift gets me up to my shower and my bedroom. But when I would go down to the bottom level where there’s a back-to-back 90-degree turn, the stairlift would land at the bottom of my stairs. Then, it would turn around so it would not be in the way of the front door and it would bump a little bit. Their rep said that that was normal but maybe somebody could come out and take a look at that to see if that is the way it has to be.

Also, I know that there's an option for a larger footrest but they gave me the standard one. Nobody measured my feet and it's such a small footrest for me. My legs don't do a full 90-degree and I have to bring my feet up, then I got to push it onto the rest. And my feet hang over a bit, especially my left foot. It hasn't hit anything, but it's very uncomfortable to hold my feet. I spoke to JK Medical Supply about it and their rep said that he'd see what he could do. Other than that, I couldn't be more happy with this fine piece of equipment. The chair is great and very nice-looking. It matches my house nicely, too.

The first one had the ratcheting tie down type thing to secure the chairlift to the platform. The last two did not and my chair still shifts. So, when I turn a corner, I'm reusing what I bought at Lowe's. I have big clips and then they're attached to a strong, wide Velcro tab that is about 12 inches each end, so it gets around and it secures the chair to the platform. I don't like the chair shifting when I'm turning corners. I like the last one better than the one in between because it's a little heavier. It works good. It gets the chair out and I can go places and do stuff. If you're going to do something, you have to be able to walk from the driver side of the car to the back and get it up, which is 10 feet. I can do that and it's good for me.

Two women did the installation and I was very impressed. I was very proud of them. Ours is a very much custom-made heavy thing and it was complicated. It took pretty much all day but they did great. The video and pictures online were pretty right on, except for the installation. As elegant as the rail look, the bracket used to put it in with what must be 100 steel bolts on our stairs is beyond not pretty. I was joking with my daughter and said, “It’s like having the Golden Gate Bridge in my house.” The track looks great. It matches the beige wall and the carpet. But all those bolts are really ugly. I was offered some paint to cover those. But that'll make it even tackier-looking.

My husband died a few days before the stairlift was put in. But he was hopeful that that would have helped him get to treatment. I have been trying to see if I can get my knees to recover from the months of trauma I inflicted on them. I have not used the stairlift as much as I would have earlier on. But it reassures me that if my knees don't really recover, I'll still be able to get up and down.

The initial installation was not good. The crew did not tighten the bolts down so when I was testing the stairlift, it would make a lot of noise and my husband was concerned. When he checked it, he found the bolts weren’t tightened and that was a safety issue. Techs came right out and fixed it. Everything else I've had with them has been excellent. I liked their professionalism and they were very honest about the product. The display was excellent too.

With the stairlift, we have to wiggle around it a little bit but not dangerously so. I'm happy with it. The stairlift has the appropriate safety beeps and things. I wish it turned automatically but that would have been another thousand-dollar adjustment so we didn't do that. I would have loved to have the feature where you don't have to use your feet to rotate at the top of the stairs. That was available to me but I needed to pay the extra money and I elected not to. Other than that, it's doing very well.

I preferred some of the features on the old one as opposed to the new one. The new one is the Elan. The older model had a padded armrest, and the new one doesn't. On the new one, the arms are bowed out farther, which wasn't necessary. Also, I don't care for the new up and down switch on the arm. It looks like a bird's tail fin sticking out there. It looks like it would be easy for someone to catch and break off. The old rocker switch was just fine. I enjoyed that one.

I would recommend Bruno to a friend because the quality is high. However, they have a bad design in the rail because when it was first installed and went up and down, you expect it to be smooth and quiet and it sounded like someone banging on a tin can with a metal spoon. It rattled all the way up and down. It was driving me nuts. I talked to the installer, and he said, "Well, they have a crimping tool to address that." It was 30 days out on order, but he did get it within two weeks of his original installation. He brought it and worked on it with that tool and it quieted it. If it was designed correctly, it wouldn't make that noise the first time that they went up and down. So, I was kind of disappointed in that but it's working okay and it's quiet now, so the problem was solved.