Scooba Customer Service Experience
I bought a refurb Scooba from Amazon back in March that included a 90-day warranty. The machine worked pretty good overall, but died around October. First the charges were short lived, then it wouldn’t take a charge at all. I assumed the battery died and I purchased a new one from iRobot.com When the new battery came it ran the Scooba for a few minutes, then died. I tried charging it, but it didn’t seem to do anything. I contacted iRobot customer support by e-mail. After I answered a few questions about the Scooba, it was suggested to me that the unit be replaced. I was told they had an out of warranty replacement program where I would send the old scooba back and receive a new one with full warranty for $179. I agreed.
When the new scooba came, it would not charge. I contacted customer support by phone. I was told that I should have received a new charger unit along with the new scooba. iRobot mailed me out one at no charge. I plugged the old scooba into the new charger and it works fine. At this time, iRobot is taking the stance that the old scooba made the original charging unit go bad and it would likely do the same to the new unit if I continued to use the old charger. While this is certainly possible, it doesn’t see probable to me. It seems more likely that the charging unit went bad independent of the scooba and the new scooba is an unnecessary purchase.
I’m wondering if anyone has any insight into this issue? I am considering returning the new scooba instead of the old and disputing the credit card charge.
-George
I had the same info from iRobt regarding a bad charger and it was a situation where it cost them, not me, money to replace everything. My Roomba was under warranty. My cat had chewed on the cord on the charging unit and the charger no longer worked. But I put the Roomba on my mom’s charging unit and it charged just fine. I told iRobot they didn’t need to replace the whole thing, but they insisted — and it didn’t cost me a thing. They said having had the unit hooked up to a faulty charger could have messed up the computerized parts in the Roomba and told me it would probably fail eventually because of that.
But I have a problem with a Scooba that maybe you can help me with. I bought one over a year ago (so it’s out of warranty) but never tried using it till tonight. It didn’t wash the floor. I had lost the instructions, so maybe I did something wrong. I put the cleaner in, then filled the clean tank with water. The battery was already fully charged. Then I put the Scooba on the floor, pressed power, then pressed clean. Did I mess up somewhere in that sequence? Is there a secret to getting it to actually wash the floor, not just travel around on it? It did move around the space till the battery wore down.
Comment by PeeJay — November 24, 2007 @ 8:34 pm
I don’t know anything about iRobot’s warranty policy, but I can explain some of the technical details of the battery failure problem.
There was a known issue where if a battery was connected to the charger (either inside the Scooba or on the charging stand), and it was left there for extended periods of time, the battery would be destroyed.
If you were like me, and liked to leave your battery plugged in all the time for it to charge, you might have ruined your battery.
The Scooba itself could be “fixed” so that it wouldn’t ruin batteries while plugged in. The internal software needed an update to do this, and iRobot could send you a small gadget called an OSMO that would update the software. Unfortunately, the charging base doesn’t contain any upgradable software, so it couldn’t be fixed.
So, leaving the power connected to any of these would destroy the battery:
- An old Scooba, without the OSMO update.
- An old charging base.
These are OK to leave plugged into:
- An old Scooba, with the OSMO update.
- A new Scooba.
- A new charging base.
I don’t know if this matches what happened to you, but I thought it might help.
Comment by Judy — November 27, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
Thank god iRobot’s CUSTOMER SERVICE IS SUCH CRAP!!! It sounds like their product is, too from everything I’ve read! I suffered absolute, fierce RUDENESS from their customer service and so chose not to pursue Scooba any further!
Comment by tgator13 — June 24, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
I love my roomba. It works amazing. Fun to watch to for the whole family (very addictive) I was very sad when the wheel broke off and thought that was it but my hubby called customer service and they sent out a free replacement and upgraded the model with no shipping charge. They were great to work with. No fuss.
Comment by amy — December 30, 2009 @ 10:19 am