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As a coffee lover, I was gifted a very nice Keurig B70 brewer a little over a year and a half ago. Since then, I've been brewing coffee, decaf, hot chocolate - you name it - multiple times a day. Since I've never had any trouble with it, I didn't bother to descale the thing until I started having trouble with it.
What happened seems to be a fairly common occurrence with these brewers - eventually they either won't brew at all or won't brew a full cup of coffee. After running through two gallon bottles of white vinegar through the thing, I was able to get it working for the most part - occasionally, upon initial startup, it would fail to brew (although it would draw water into the heater and sound like it wanted to do something).
Eventually, I stumbled upon a trick - using a paper clip to clean the needles - but this only worked for another month or so, and eventually we were back to square one. It seems that after I returned from vacation (and the machine sat idle for that time), it simply wouldn't brew at all.
Since it was out of warranty, I didn't bother calling Keurig and instead ran out to Costco and bought a new one (since I had stockpiled a couple hundred K-Cups). The new machine seems to be a cost-reduced version of the old one - rather than using a metal handle, it has a plastic-chromed handle. It makes up for this, I suppose, with a slightly larger reservoir. It seems to brew fine, but is a bit noisier than the last machine and seems to click and pop a bit more. Hopefully it's not defective (I'm not a happy camper when I can't get my coffee first thing in the morning).
Anyway, I learned something today - first off, these B70 brewers seem to have a long and storied history of a service life that goes just beyond the warranty period. After that, it seems they have a healthy track record of failing due to design deficiencies. Additionally, I learned that Keurig is actually just another name for Green Mountain Coffee Brewers.
So, this company is making a small fortune off selling poorly engineered $200 coffee makers that are designed to fail just after the warranty. Additionally, they're making a killing off selling their own coffee in individual serving cups, rebranded under a variety of different familiar-sounding names. As far as I'm concerned, this is little more than a scam - and a trendy one at that. The coffee is very good and it's very convenient, but for the amount of money I've poured into K-cups, and now a second brewer after the first one's untimely demise, I'm pretty sure I'm done with them.
Anybody else had a similar experience?
What happened seems to be a fairly common occurrence with these brewers - eventually they either won't brew at all or won't brew a full cup of coffee. After running through two gallon bottles of white vinegar through the thing, I was able to get it working for the most part - occasionally, upon initial startup, it would fail to brew (although it would draw water into the heater and sound like it wanted to do something).
Eventually, I stumbled upon a trick - using a paper clip to clean the needles - but this only worked for another month or so, and eventually we were back to square one. It seems that after I returned from vacation (and the machine sat idle for that time), it simply wouldn't brew at all.
Since it was out of warranty, I didn't bother calling Keurig and instead ran out to Costco and bought a new one (since I had stockpiled a couple hundred K-Cups). The new machine seems to be a cost-reduced version of the old one - rather than using a metal handle, it has a plastic-chromed handle. It makes up for this, I suppose, with a slightly larger reservoir. It seems to brew fine, but is a bit noisier than the last machine and seems to click and pop a bit more. Hopefully it's not defective (I'm not a happy camper when I can't get my coffee first thing in the morning).
Anyway, I learned something today - first off, these B70 brewers seem to have a long and storied history of a service life that goes just beyond the warranty period. After that, it seems they have a healthy track record of failing due to design deficiencies. Additionally, I learned that Keurig is actually just another name for Green Mountain Coffee Brewers.
So, this company is making a small fortune off selling poorly engineered $200 coffee makers that are designed to fail just after the warranty. Additionally, they're making a killing off selling their own coffee in individual serving cups, rebranded under a variety of different familiar-sounding names. As far as I'm concerned, this is little more than a scam - and a trendy one at that. The coffee is very good and it's very convenient, but for the amount of money I've poured into K-cups, and now a second brewer after the first one's untimely demise, I'm pretty sure I'm done with them.
Anybody else had a similar experience?