Complete Junk

We received the Kitchen Aid KCM 515 for our wedding in early 2008.  Because we remained crammed in a tiny apartment for a year and a half after the wedding, the coffee maker remained packed away with most of our other wedding gifts.

When we finally moved to a house in late 2009, we were so excited to unpack and use our shiny new kitchen appliances such as the Kitchen Aid coffee maker.  We made one batch of coffee with the KCM-- it was okay, though I did notice that it was not extremely warm.

The next day, my wife tried it again and received an error message-- "Error 2."  No amount of resetting and unplugging defeated the stubborn error message.  A quick check on the Internet confirmed that this is a common problem with this model.

I called Kitchen Aid, which confirmed that the error message means a certain part had irreparably failed and the unit must be replaced.

(On a side note: A shout out to Bed Bath and Beyond for its awesome return policy on gift registry items-- they allowed us to return the item for original full purchase credit, no questions asked, even though it was purchased nearly two years ago)

So to summarize: the Kitchen Aid KCM 515 made ONE(1) batch of coffee before failing completely.  Sheesh, Kitchen Aid, how about a little quality control? 

We ended up reverting to our tiny, 7-year-old Mr. Coffee, which has never failed us.  We plan to get a new coffee maker eventually but next time we'll be sure to do more reliability research.  (When we returned to Bed Bath and Beyond, we noticed they no longer carried any Kitchen Aid coffee makers at all, so it's likely they've received many other returned models as well).