iRobot 560 Roomba Vacuuming Robot, Black and Silver
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of iRobot 560 Roomba Vacuuming Robot, Black and Silver
Customer Review: BEWARE... Customer Support HORRIBLE!
Summary: 1 Stars
I bought the Roomba 560 the beginning of January 2009. It has worked less than 10 out of the 60 days I have owned it. I have been on the phone for at least 4 hrs over the past 2 months trying to get beyond all its error messages. Customer service is based in the Caribbean. Each time I call, they walk me through several steps including taking the unit apart to reset things. Then I am instructed to reassemble the Roomba and set it on the charger for 16 hours. The next day - still gives me the same error. Even though the same thing keeps happening, Roomba will not replace the unit, they want me to work on my end to fix it. I have all Travertine tile & the loved the way the Roomba worked on the days it did work. It could be such a great time saver however I am at the point that it would be far better to just vacuum myself and avoid the whole customer service time. Would NEVER buy this again.Customer Review: BUYER BEWARE
Summary: 1 Stars
Exactly one month after the warranty ran out it stopped working ..THEY DO NOT sell replacement parts for the sensors that go dim. SO vaccumm is useless. Roomba says they cannot fix it. Roomba wanted to give me a 10% discount if i would buy a new one .HA-- fool me once etc...CALL them and ask them ,say your vaccumm beeps 9 times ,you cleaned it out but goes in circles,see what they say.. STAY away form this.. YOU have been warned...Customer Review: Badly serviced, good product
Summary: 3 Stars
This company is taking serious advantage of the lack of competition for this product.
Some of the other reviews here are comprehensive and consistent with my expereience. I would like to add and emphasize additional issues that I have had with poor customer service. With regular use you will have to replace brushes frequently, replace the side brush motor and the wheels. For me these items failed with little or no warning. Replacement parts ship 7-10 BUSINESS days after the order is placed, add on another week for shipping time and you are pushing a month without a functioning roomba. In my first 9 months of use, my machine has been idle for 3 months waiting for parts.
Badly needed, at the least, is better engineering for the parts to last longer, or faster shipping of replacement parts. Improvement in both respects is needed for me to become a truely satisfied customer.
Customer Review: Battery Life
Summary: 2 Stars
I have had a Roomba for about 4 years now and would I purchase another one? No. It does a fairly good job of cleaning surface dirt. But there are 2 problems with it. It gets hung up on chair legs (the type that forms a "U" going from leg to leg) I had to put some pipe insulation on the legs to raise the chair up so the vacuum would bounce off it as apposed to riding over it. Not really a big deal in the long run. But the BIG problem is battery life. As with so many items that I purchase, I have to ask myself; what will it cost to feed this item? The problem in this area of course is that we usually don't know when it come to battery life. This pisses me off to the n'th degree. I'm in the home improvement business, and so many of my tools are battery powered. Have you seen the price of NiCads or Lithiums? You might just as well buy a new tool as apposed to replacing the battery. The worst in that regard is Skill - the batteries last just 6 months. In the case of the roomba - 1 year. So here's the deal; Are you willing to spend $69.00 every year? I did it twice. The first year I had roomba run every day. The second year I had it run twice a week. No difference, it still lasted only a year. Do they have the technology to make the batteries last longer? You bet they do! When was the last time you had to replace your rechargeable electric toothbrush? I have had 1 of mine for 11 years and another for 16.
Suggestion? Buy a Dyson and plug it in the wall. What a great vacuum!
Customer Review: Believe the hype! Embrace the epic sloth within!
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh man. Man, oh man. Love is too small a word. I hate to vacuum. I'm a bachelor. Do the math. Visitors to my bathroom wear hazmat suits. So, I bought this thing thinking that it would be a cool novelty. A toy. Nope. This is a serious piece of dirt-destroying techno-zen. Reading other reviews, I knew I'd have to start out with clean floors for this to work, so I hired a professional to use a van-based steam cleaner to get my carpets perfect. With this done, I set the Roomba to work. First of all, it is amazing entertainment. I let it zip around the tv area for about ten minutes when its factory-charge began to run out. So, while it was charging, I examined the under-brush. Matted with hair... hair the steam cleaner didn't get! (I shed a lot. I am gifted with more and more forehead each year.) I cleaned it. The next day, it tried to do a cleaning, but got hung up on the circular base of one of my chairs and powered down. (A book-barrier solved this.) The day after that, I came home after it had done a full apartment cleaning. Bedroom. Living/dining room. Kitchen. The dirt trap was nearly full and the brush was again matted with hair. This tells me that the Roomba is very good at what it does. I expect less and less hair and dirt each day as the Roomba scours away the layers of single livin'. The extension brush gets all wall-edges and a sensor detects dirtier areas and focuses the Roomba on spot-cleaning them. I have come to the conclusion that the Roomba is more than a novelty. It's actually a really, really good vacuum. The fact that it's a robot isn't just a boon to the lazy. It has nothing better to do than clean, clean, clean. I have no idea how long it would take a human to do as good a job, but thanks to the Roomba, I'll never find out. It's as tenacious as it is powerful. This is actually worth the investment. It is NOT just a toy for the idle. It WORKS!