Bob’s coffee maker went rogue. It’s one of those single-serve models, and decided to empty its whole reservoir onto the counter and floor when no one was around. No one really appreciated its attempt at pitching in to clean up the place, especially since it wouldn’t turn back on and make coffee afterwards. Cuisinart’s solution? Pack up the coffeemaker and ship it back to New Jersey. That’s a pricey proposition to send it using some kind of secure method: Bob lives in Alaska.

He writes:

We bought a Cuisinart single serve coffee maker Christmas eve last year. Last Sunday it decided to start running by itself, no one even in the room, and did not stop until it emptied the entire reservoir on to the counter and floor. When we found what it had done, we tried to shut it off but no go with the switch so we finally unplugged it. We checked all the possibilities in the manual and then finally contacted Cuisinart Customer Service by email on Monday.

Two days later having received no response from Cuisinart, we called Customer Service. We were told to ship it to them in New Jersey at our expense despite the fact that the 3 year warranty says nothing about us having to pay shipping. This might not seem like a big deal unless you happen to live in Alaska and know what it costs to ship to the lower 48. Paying $50 to ship a box that size to NJ to replace a $200 product is not reasonable but the Cuisinart Customer Service Manager on the phone said that this was our problem not theirs.

Bottom line; we’ll not be purchasing any more Cuisinart products and being the CEO of a major corporation here in AK, I’ll make sure my employees and other heads of corporations up here get the word out also. Sad, that was once a really good company.

It’s not really about the $50; it’s about the price of shipping an item across the continent when removing one part to prove it’s no longer working would suffice. (This is the method that competitor Keurig uses.)

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