Gotta' Love Kitchen Aid

We are big smoothie drinkers here in Rutherford-dom. We love green smoothies made primarily of spinach and strawberries (sound and looks gross, but YUM!) We're big fans of yogurt and frozen mixed fruit with stevia, or bananas and blueberries, or strawberries and blueberries. Really, we just love smoothies.

We have multiple ways to make our liquid power drinks, too. Our Tribest Personal Blender is fantastic if only a few of us are partaking. Think "Bullet" from the infomercial, but made waaaaaaaay better. But if it's an afternoon snack or the drink for a meal, we pull out the KitchenAid 7-cup Polycarbonate Jar Blender. I adore this machine. However, I must admit that we are not on our originally purchased blender.

We have replaced it once due to Shelby's belief that if the amount of fruit I told her to put in was good, then double that would be better. Of course, she stripped the knob which rotates the blade assembly, leaving a perfectly good motor without the all-in-one Polycarbonate jar, which happens to be one of my favorite features about the blender. Amazon being Amazon meant that for only $10 more than a replacement jar, I could just buy a brand new blender and have a motor "on reserve."

Then, during one of my episodes of major decluttering, I looked at the extra motor in Scott's closet and felt like we should sell it on eBay, make a few dollars, and clear some space. Yes, I can feel you shaking your heads already at the Murphy's Law situation I set myself up for.

Sure enough, less that 2 weeks after selling the motor, Dawson decided that the smoothie needed some extra "umph" and added some ginger ale:

Ginger Ale + Liquefy = Smoothie Encased Motor

Suddenly, the $35 we received for the extra motor didn't seem like such a good deal.

I checked our faithful Amazon again to learn that the only blender to be had for less that $100 was the hideous black one. Not to bash black if that's your color preference, but I adore having bright and cheery colors all about me and I really, really loved my Tangerine. But, I love my husband more and I couldn't justify his working for an entire extra hour to enable my purchase of the preferred orange over the more affordable black, especially since the end result is the same: liquid fruit drinks.

Our dull and color-sucking black arrived quickly & we were happily blending away again. And now we had the added bonus of TWO polycarbonate jars, which was just fabulous. A family of 10 really does need more than one batch of blender pancakes, so now that we were able to mix up two batches at once we were again enjoying this family breakfast favorite. I did notice that the motor sounded a little "off." Just a higher pitch than our previous motor had emitted, but I quickly dismissed it as simply resulting from my crazy-sensitive hearing.

Last week, as we were preparing a smoothie snack for the afternoon, the first jar was whirring away when there was an ear-splitting crack followed by a crazy-metal-on-plastic-rattling. I cringed as I looked over toward the blender, fully prepared for smoothie to begin oozing out the gaping hole I was sure was in the jar. After shutting the motor off, I lifted the jar to discover there was no hole, but there was a nice, big piece of metal sitting on the bottom of the clear-plastic. Huh. Turns out, one of the four blades literally ripped itself free. Yikes.

I called KitchenAid, as the warranty was still in effect and -- get this -- after I hit about two buttons directing me to the proper department, there was no more automated system. A REAL, LIVE, HONEST-TO-GOODNESS PERSON ANSWERED THE PHONE. Within moments of my telling her what had happened, I was assured a new blender would be sent THAT DAY to my home accompanied by a return shipping label in order to send back the entire blender. Also, they would make certain that my new blender had paperwork to ensure that my warranty was reset for 1 year from the receipt of the replacement, not from the date of original purchase. Wow.

Then came the best part. She asked if a white motor would be acceptable. I looked over at the yicky black and this little voice inside me said: "Just try it." So, I explained how I really loved the orange motor but my children had had some blending issues in the past resulting in the current ownership of the defective black motor. Would it be at all possible to have a Tangerine motor sent? Her amazing answer: "If it is in stock, I will happily send you the orange. If not, is there any other color you would prefer?" Seriously, when was the last time you had a company behave this way????

TWO DAYS LATER . . . FedEx arrives with my blender. TWO DAYS!!! And, sure enough, it was my beloved Tangerine. Again - wow.

Now, admittedly my really, really, really favorable impression of KitchenAid could simply be timing. We have been dealing with Pampered Chef returns of my pay-through-the-nose-lifetime-guarantee -Professional Cookware that simply isn't holding up well to a family of 10's usage. I mean, seriously, do they need to tell me with each piece that they will be inspecting for misuse and if they determine that I didn't use the proper tools (which I purchased from their company to ensure my pots would be fine, thank you very much) then you will simply send my pot back?

But, I don't think that's it. I think it has just been a really long time since someone in customer service didn't assume we were out to cheat them and were instead simply letting them know that our machine didn't perform as promised. Then again, having a blade whirring about the jar probably wasn't in the plans when they designed the blender. It is pretty hard to argue with.

But, for my money - KitchenAid all the way. They certainly sold me on their products simply by standing behind the one that broke.