Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have had my new Zoji about 3 months now. I have made bread for many years, using my Welbilt, but I tweaked the bread pan on some very heavy wheat bread. I bought a Zoji because I read good reviews, and it seemed like the 2 paddles would be better for the heavy breads I like to make my husband for breakfast. My first bread in the Zoji I made honey wheat bread with minced dried fruit in it. The Zoji made a very dense loaf, kind of dry, and burned the sides while barely cooking the top...I thought it was just too much honey causing the sides to burn...but I was wrong...Many loaves later, many types of bread later, I have finally figured it out...It is this bread machine...each loaf comes out cooked very well (too well) on the sides, barely cooked on top...(one loaf came out partially raw) no matter what the setting the crust is not right...The sides too dark, the top too light. ALL the breads came out course, crumby and dry, not just the wheat...I have tried many of my "old faithful" recipes...all made an inferior, dense, dry,crumby bread...the problem I finally found is the 3 rise program...When I programmed the machine last night to only have 2 rises, I actually got a decent loaf of bread...more like home made bread tastes...I have never seen a recipe calling for 3 rises....why did they do this? It makes a dense, "crumby" bread, similar to a factory made bread...nice for a sandwich, I admit, but not what one expects a home made bread to taste like and the texture is awful. Then there are the two paddles...I thought they would keep flour out of the corners...surprise...I have been having to use the spatula to get flour out of the upper corners...so much for carefree unattended baking... I figured out lopsided bread (a common problem some folks have)is due to making a recipe with less than about 4 cups of flour...) I have made enough bread in this machine by now to know it just makes terrible bread...I will have to program in each loaf of bread I make, to correct the 3 rise/crumb issue but still will have to deal with bread that burns on the sides...and may not always be quite done on top... Given that I have made bread for 20+ years, and long before I had any bread machine, I can probably make it work...with some adjustments...but for $200 I shouldn't have to... In my opinion, this bread machine flunks the "prima facie" test...It does not make very good bread...In fact it makes downright awful bread. Now one thing I like about the machine is making cakes in it...it makes cakes a lot less messy to bake...it works just fine for real cake recipes...although it "kneads" so long I was concerned about it overbeating...but so far it has not and has made pretty good cake for the 3 cakes/quick breads I have made... I haven't tried the jam setting yet...I anticipate it will save some of the mess perhaps... But--there's just one small problem... I bought this machine to make bread...and for that function, I give the Zojirushi a BIG HANDS DOWN... Buy a Breadman, a top rated machine also...a LOT cheaper, and I hear it makes a decent loaf of bread...but then many folks said this one was good also...and I have to strongly disagree with that. By the way, when I talked to customer service about being unhappy with the machine, and outlining my complaints they told me I could sell it on eBay if i didn't like it ---- so you may not want to expect much from them....the philosophy of their customer service seemed to be "we don't care if you are happy with our product or not--we have your money and now we don't care"