That's it for me, Roomba going back to store for good

C · Guest

I tried... I tried real hard... I wanted so much for this to work as I hate vacuming, but it is going back to the store for good. :cry: Roomba is a great idea, awsome tool, but is unreliable as nothing I have seen before!

Roomba 1: I bought the first Roomba Discovery SE a little over a month ago, out of the box the unit was defective (one of the wheels was loose).
First unit goes back for replacement...

Roomba 2: I replaced the first Roomba with a second unit only to come home and see some parts were missing (replacement filters and cleaning tool) and also it was obvious this unit was used at some point as there was dirt on the sensors (needless to say this was a brand new sealed box from Brookstone).
Second unit goes back for replacement...

Roomba 3: Again got a new Roomba SE from Brookstone and this one actually worked for couple of days and then just died after couple of minutes. I decided to use the warranty this time and called iRobot. They were nice and right away decided my unit was defective and asked me to send them the brush guard. 10 days later, a new Roomba unit was at my doorstep with a nice smiling UPS guy.

Roomba 4: What do you know, this one worked (cleaned quite good actually), but it seemed odd that it always used all of the battery charge (1.5 hours give or take) no matter what size of room it cleaned. A call to iRobot and a quick procedure to reset the Roomba memory proved something was wrong with the sensors and iRobot asked me to ship the entire unit to them (Fair enough it was on their expense). I said no thanks and decided to replace this one again at Brookstone as it could have taken over 3 weeks with iRobot.
Roomba 4 goes back to store...

Roomba 5: I don't even know if this one works, but out of the box the charging base is broken (you can see and hear all the internal parts shuffling inside).
That's it for me... Roomba 5 goes back for store and this time not even taking a replacement.

Bottom line, this could have been a great tool, but it is unreliable and iRobot quality control is something you can just laugh at.

Too bad, I wanted this to work...

Penny · Guest

Sorry to hear that, but from what you wrote I think most of your problems have to do with your local Brookstone, not with iRobot.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely a fair share of defective Roombas out there, but the ones you got from the store with missing, broken or used parts are not factory problems.

Heck, they don't even get any Roomba returns at iRobot - they simply ask for the brush guards back - so how can they even have used ones to distribute?

C · Guest

I thought this might have been a local problem with Brookstone and this is why I actually used a warranty exchange one time but it didn't make much of a difference.
By the way, I exchanged the defective unit at 2 different stores so it's not a store issue and since the boxes were factory sealed, and I'll give Brookstone to benefit from the doubt that it was really factory sealed boxes (only 1 box had missing parts).

Phairestofthemall · Guest

Well at least ya tried, come back for the 3rd-gen maybe.

Guest · Guest

Penny wrote: Sorry to hear that, but from what you wrote I think most of your problems have to do with your local Brookstone, not with iRobot.

Heck, they don't even get any Roomba returns at iRobot - they simply ask for the brush guards back - so how can they even have used ones to distribute?

well....not exactly. My second defective roomba got returned to Irobot complete...their expense....