has anyone actually used these steam cleaners advertised on tv are they worth trying out?

I have a Shark steamer, but rarely use it. Once, I tried to use in on the shower ceramic tile and it softened the caulking, had to have my son come over and scrape it all out and re caulk where the tile meets the tub. It did work OK on the inside of the glass shower door because I didn't have to worry about a pool of water on the floor.

Used it on a stubborn spot on kitchen floor and all it did was make a puddle of water. The steam doesn't evaporate, it liquefies as soon as it hits something with a lower temperature, which is just about everything.

Don't use it on anything you want to stay dry, like curtains or furniture.

The floor steamers have those pads that you have to handle and wash, they get dirty and wet very fast and just touching them gives me the creeps.

In the last house I rented there was an ANCIENT steam mop thing, and it worked really well. I was excited to use it because I had seen those infomercials, and I was not disappointed. You had to push it along really slowly as it puffed steam everywhere and made a puddle on the floor, but it worked the best out of everything I tried for getting the deep stains out of the floor. (And there was a LOT of staining.. not from me, from previous renters..)

I think anything that works on the same basic principles (shooting boiling steam everywhere) will work very well, and the companies have probably improved their designs since the time that one was made, so I'd definitely give it a shot.

Absolutely do not buy any of the Shark products. They're horrible. I bought one for cleaning surfaces like the shower grout. It didn't even come close to working as advertised. Worst, the store I bought it from wouldn't take it back because the idiot clerk thought it qualified as an "electronic" product. I left the blasted thing in the store anyway without getting my money back I hated it that much.