I am a firm believer in you get what you pay for but, I don't believe that just because it has a high price tag it's a better product. I have thrown in the towel and have to say everything manufactured today for the general consumer is crap! What has led to this? Well, for the past two years I have been throwing out coffee makers. Three to be exact. A KitchenAid, which was my wife's when we first met, that died two years ago at the ripe age of two. Replaced with a Hamilton Beech that was falling apart the minute that it was pulled from the package. This was such a miserable machine, it amazed me that the designers accepted it was worth selling. I won't get it the details but it was so bad that it was thrown away as a still functioning unit. Next up was a Zojirushi. Not familiar? They are a the inventors of the vacuum bottle. We have one of there hot water dispensers. Which we absolutely love.
Great, coffee maker, it was whisper quiet, so quiet in fact that when it failed after nine months of service, I didn't even notice till I went to pour an empty cup of coffee.
Now, we're back to a KitchenAid. Last night I managed to break the handle pulling it out of the package. Some goofy packaging and a set of butter fingers caused it. My wife said "looks like were off to a good start with this one" I replied " Who cares, it won't last long anyways"
Of course I have an edge of extra bitterness thrown in, courtesy of the recent demise of my two year old Samsung 46" HDTV. Fortunately, my wife talked me into the service contract that replaced the unrepairable TV.
I am starting my conspiracy theory that "THEY" don't want me to be caffeinated and watching TV
My Dad say's his coffee maker is twelve years old and still works fine... Yes, it still works fine because it was made twelve years ago before the manufactures figured out that you don't make money selling something that lasts.

 

I am still too young to yell at the kids to stay off my lawn

Bringing your theory home on same brands sold at different stores with varying quality.
It is a known fact that John Deer lawn equipment sold at Lowes is not the same as the equipment sold in John Deer dealers. The prices are the tip off to something being a little funny. They look the same but the components used are completely different. I learned this first hand. I had a tractor bought from a direct dealer. During a conversation with the parts guy, he told me he didn't have parts for the lawn equipment sold outside of the dealerships and all those had to be bought online. This was several years ago so maybe things have changed.
A friend of mine owns a landscape company and he told me the same thing. He learned this from having to get a Lawn boy mower in a pinch from Home Depot or Lowes. He said it lasted only a few months even though it was the same model as the one it replaced that had been running for years. When he took it to his repair guy for service, the repair man knew right away it wasn't a dealer sold product.

What it boils down too is these company's are ruining there reputation.

By the way I am proud to say, my lawn mowers are a Solaris cordless electric and a Toro passed on to me from my dad neither of which were bought from major chain store.

 

I just bought one of these:

http://www.clivecoffee.com/product/technivorm_cdt_brewer_silver.html

Quite expensive, and I have only had it for two days. But it has a 5 year warranty, and comes highly recommended by America's Test Kitchen. It is not perfect, but it makes good coffee.

 

Knowing my wife likes a good cup of espresso, I bought her an Italian espresso maker, the kind that grinds the bean and has so many bells and whistles that it could be mistaken for a planes cockpit. It needs to go in for repairs, again, and soon the repair costs will exceed the original price.

Last year we replaced the old dishwasher (from the 70's), on the second use it started smoking, some electronic component burned out.

So much of what we buy today, is designed to fail by business, using 'planned obsolescence'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

What bugs me the most is that things are built so cheap that it's cheaper to buy new than to repair, so stuff gets thrown out too much.

 

this is how big business makes their big bucks, inferior quality at tremendous mark ups. We pay 10-100 times what it cost to make the product only to have it break down and have to buy a replacement, if they made stuff that lasts they wouldn't show annual quarterly proffits and therefor the CEOs couldn't warrent their rediculous salaries

 

Interesting comparison. My house was built in 1985. It has the original A/C, furnace, stove oven and built in microwave. We replaced the original dishwasher last year as it was not quite cleaning that well.
The A/C is really impressive as it runs 9 months out of the year here in south Texas.
Walmart is the last place I buy anything. I leave that place for the suckers.

 

I stand corrected, I bought a cuisinart... a food processor company making coffee makers. It won't last long. It works well...for awhile.

I saw the MoccaMaster in Williams Sonoma today. My luck, I would drop the 300 bones on it and it would burn my house down. It looks capable. It probably uses high discharge Lipo batteries with sketchy wiring to back up the clock. Either that or depleted Uranium stored in a leaky lead jacket. LOL!
How about that Gadhafi guy?..I'll bet getting a good coffee maker was the least of his worries.
Beaten by an angry mob can't feel good.

 

That's pretty much the one I bought. Only difference is I got the thermal carafe and some of the buttons are different.

 

Run a pint or so of white vinegar through it, and then 2-3 runs of fresh water. If it is really scaled badly, run a second pint of vinegar and then the water. This will smell like pickles, but it will de-scale it.

 

Vinager works ok but, if you really want a good cleaning, use this

http://www.amazon.com/Cleancaf-Cleaner- ... B000FDDU8G

I was amazed at the amount of gunk that came out of my coffee maker after using it. I never have seen vinager clean this well.