Dave

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

Coffee Maker Report: Mine Sucks!

Let me dispense with the formalities and tell you flat out, my recent purchase (a month ago) of the Hamilton Beach BrewStation 10-cup Coffee Maker I bought from Wal Mart is a piece of crap and, it sucks. I only tell you this so you won't make the same mistake I did.

First, you should know that my wife prefers coffee from a percolator type pot. We used to spend about $75.00 every year purchasing a really fancy one from JC Penny, but after a while, I figured why spend so much on one that had the auto-brew timer when I could just buy the regular percolator and wait the five minutes it takes to make coffee. So, for the next few years we used a regular plug in percolator and the coffee was good, but for whatever reason, our last one fried and it was time for a new one.

We get into Wal Mart and I tell my wife that I would prefer to buy the $15.00 Proctor and Silex carafe coffee maker and just replace every six months like normal people do. Here in San Antonio, we have seriously hard water. If you don't own a water softener system (and we don't) your dishwasher, your coffee maker and everything else goes to crap unless you are constantly conducting preventative maintenance to clean the calcium build-up out. Lots of vinegar.

Anyway, my wife points out this spiffy Hamilton Beach BrewStation gimmick where you don't actually have a carafe, but instead, a holder where the coffee collects and you simply retrieve that fresh mug of coffee directly into your cup! Brilliant!

So, first mistake is, we get the 10-cup version. Ten Dixie cups, maybe! I kid you not, fully loaded, it makes three normal sized cups of coffee. But, what the hey.
For the first week, the coffee tasted kinda burnt. I thought the burnt flavor would wear off, and actually, today, a month later, it finally tasted pretty good. Unfortunately, today was also the day when the thing just stopped functioning by any standard of acceptable performance.

Now imagine this. I set the thing to brew all ten Dixie cups of coffee, and after about ten minutes, I walk over to the machine to see that it has brewed two Dixie cups worth. I look inside, and sure enough, the water in the reservoir has ceased pumping. I look and the red light indicating power is still on, so I turn it off then back on. Like clockwork, it brews two more Dixie cups worth of coffee and I recycle the power again, and get two more. What the hell?

So my wife and I enjoy our regular size cups of coffee, thus emptying the BrewStation, and my wife tells me it should be cleaned. I whip out the coffee cleaner stuff and as expected, it will only brew the cleaner stuff two Dixie cups at a time. Forget it. My life is too short to deal with this kinda crap. I'm pretty sure we'll be out purchasing a new percolator today. I somehow suspect this was planned well in advance by my wife.

And in case you are wondering, no, we don't have the box it came in or the receipt. That pretty much spells, "You own it" in Wal Mart lingo.

What kind of coffee maker do you use? Tell me about it.

7 comments:

Blonde Goddess said...

We do some serious coffee drinking at my house. I own a BUNN and when it dies I will shell out a hundred or more dollars to buy a new one.
I will not compromise.
I will not wait.
I have NEVER had a bad cup of coffee from my beloved BUNN.

I love my BUNN and if you experienced it, you'd love it too...

:)

Dave said...

I've actually experienced the BUNN before, and if your's is as good as the BUNNs I've had before, I'd say it's good. You don;t have a picture of it do you?

In the endwe are using the percolator until we come up with a better idea.

Anon E. Mouse said...

Buy a new copy of the same model, then drop the old one into the new box, and return. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey, Dave, I took a bottle of OTC MEDICINE back to Walmart, no receipt, I had just bought the wrong thing.
No questions, no hassle, nothing. At customer service they told me to go get a bottle of the right thing, bring it back to her specifically, no problem.
I did some additional shopping and she rang those up too; took me out of line at another register to do all this.
It may have helped that I called ahead, spoke with a manager, prior to going there. I onlyl did that because I assumed they would probably NOT allow me to return an OPEN bottle of OTC medicine.
I'd bet they'll take this coffeemaker back.
PopsGuysRule
Holly

Anonymous said...

The best coffeemaker I ever owned was a Norelco. Lasted for EONS, not sure they make coffemakers anymore.
I lived in So Calif most of my life and the water is even harder there; this Norelco survived for many years...
Hope this doesnt post duplcate again..
PopsGuysRule
Holly

Dave said...

Hmmm... Well, I have it all cleaned up. Maybe I can drop buy and see if they won't at least give me an even exchange. Of course, it could turn into a monthly thing with they ol' Dixie Cup dispenser.

Anonymous said...

Don't buy a BUNN, in my experience they're just as worthless as the rest. I just had a $100+ Bunn die after a little over a year. And I took great care of it too. I'll never spend a lot of money on a coffee maker again, it's gonna be the cheapest line at Target from now on.

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San Antonio, TX, United States
I love to observe the odd things happening around me as I go about my day. I especially like it when I can get a picture of people being themselves. Here, I attempt to report the various people and events I have encountered in my neighborhood, and my city. I'd also love to hear from you. Feel free to e-mail your experiences and photos of life in San Antonio.

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