Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am an intermediate sewist. I sew for my small business, I sew for fun, I dabble in quilting and have been sewing for around 15 years. This was not my first time at the sewing rodeo, or sewdeo, if you will. My first machine was a mid-90s Singer and while it wasn't great, it got the job done until I upgraded to a computerized model in another brand and really fell in love with sewing. I needed a more basic workhorse machine with speed for production, though. I read the reviews and thought I would take a chance anyway since I do know my way around a sewing machine. And I had read the review here about that stupid fiddly step #7 to thread the darned thing that is not clear in the manual, so I felt prepared to take on the Singer Heavy Duty. So, let the gripes begin: This machine is not very heavy at all (didn't feel like a lot of metal in it) and the case is all plastic, and not even very sturdy plastic. The area over the lightbulb was actually flexing when I lightly pushed on it with a finger. Which I was doing because when reaching over it, I noticed that it was VERY warm from the heat of the bulb. When winding a bobbin it seemed to strain once the bobbin began to fill up. And what is with the thread spool? It's tucked into the notch for the handle like they forgot to make a place for it until it was all assembled and just stuck it on there. It's awkward and feels like it could break off very easily. Woe be unto you if you are not firmly holding down the threads behind your work when you begin sewing, this thing will snatch them right up and you have to thread the whole stupid thing again. Oh yeah, it's also not quiet. I expected it to be loud, but several times at top speed a very faint high pitched noise would occur. Loud enough to be heard over the sweet sounds of Whitesnake's Here I Go Again blasting out of my mp3 player dock. Just loud enough for me to stop sewing and listen to see if it was the smoke alarm going off. Seriously. And going from high speed to stop and then starting again will will screw up your tension for a moment and leave a few loosey-goosey stitches on the bobbin side. And as long as I am griping, the whole thing smelled very plasticky and after 10 days out of the box, the smell was not fading. It got worse the longer that the light was on. Not like hot plastic, just very chemically plasticky unpleasanty to be sitting a foot away from for a few hours at a go. I will say this: once I got the hang of holding the threads and not stopping and starting at high speed down, there is no denying that it is very fast. And it did sew pretty well, until it suddenly didn't sew anymore. At all. Which happened 10 days after it was delivered and after I sewed 12 little cotton bags for knitting projects, these are not heavy duty or difficult materials. I was sewing along and it went kerrr-CHUNK in mid stitch and then...nothing. The timing was completely out on it. I looked at the list of repair shops in my state and there was exactly one. It happened to be ten minutes away, but after thinking about it and checking with some far more experience friends who sew, I decided it wasn't worth it. If a little bit of light duty sewing threw the timing out of a brand new machine, what was going to happen when I needed to do something fancy? The UPS driver picked it up this morning. Buy something else. Or learn to hand sew. Use fabric glue, scotch tape, hell, just staple whatever you need to join together. Just don't get this machine.