From Danni:

What I was going to suggest is that for me, vacuum cleaners always seem to work quite well with shall we say - stubborn - spiders who put themselves in a position where it is virtually impossible to hit them with a shoe.

Just a thought.

P.S. It's best if the vacuum cleaner in question has a bag which can be disposed of eventually, as opposed to the new bagless vacuum cleaners in which it would be rather nasty to clean it out later.