Are my expectations too high?
I hate it when I buy products that just don’t work. For those of you who don’t know about me and shopping, I am very anal. I generally research all the big products to death. I use Consumer Reports, opinion sights, newsgroups etc… It took me the better part of a month to pick my new washer and dryer.
On the other hand, some things I do almost no research on. In this case, it was a coffee maker. We have been making these for what, a hundred and fifty years. They are in almost every home and office in the country. After 8 years of faithful service my last coffee maker gave it up. It sprung a leak and half the coffee ended up on the counter.
I was not real disappointed, after all I bought it at Wal-Mart for very little money. After a short ceremony at the garbage can, I was off to Wal-Mart to buy a new coffee maker.
To give you an idea of what I look for in a coffee maker, it has to make 12 cups and have no clock or alarm. All I ask is that it makes coffee and lets me put the coffee in a cup. The first one I picked up had been recalled and Wal-Mart would not sell it to me. Isn’t that a great service by Wal-Mart? They know it’s recalled and won’t sell it, of course they don’t pull it off the shelf either.
After looking at all the models again, I found the Mr. Coffee model CG-12. Less than 30 bucks and made by Mr. Coffee. Mr. Coffee has been around forever it seems. They really should know how to make a coffee maker, after all it’s what they do.
I brought the Coffee Maker home, washed the pot ran it with water only once and made a pot of coffee. Alas, here is where the problem starts. I started to pour the coffee and about 5% of the coffee goes back down the front of the pot. I have had this pot now for a month and it really makes me angry every time I use it.
I have to pour the coffee over the sink and then use a towel to wipe up the front of the pot. I realize it’s only $25 bucks but come on. How long have we been making coffee pots that pour the coffee out? This is Mr. Coffee we are talking about, they probably have 100 million pots in use world wide. How can they not get the pour spout right?
I know what you are all thinking, just take it back to Wal-Mart and get another one. Well, I can’t, I opened it up like a kid on Christmas (hey we are talking about my morning coffee here) and threw away the box. I should just get another coffee maker and move on.
But now I keep it to remind me (every darn morning) that I should research everything I buy. Had I just checked Amazon or any of my other haunts I would have saved some time. If companies ever wonder what happened to brand loyalty, they should just look up their reviews at sites. I should blog about brand loyalty and employee loyalty at some point.