Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the first laminator I've purchased. I've been using it to laminate my son's spelling word list each week, his artwork that I would like to keep, and have also made chore charts/visual schedules for him. We've had it for 9 months now and I've had no problems whatsoever until recently. Two weeks ago I began a rather large project: laminating all of his Lego instruction manuals and putting them in 3 ring binders. It began well but then come the 10th sheet, it jammed. I had to remove the bottom plastic piece in order to get the sheet out because it had crinkled up inside the machine. Ok. No problem. Got the sheet out, screwed the piece back on, fired it up again.... jammed again. So, skip forward to today (2 weeks later). I have thrown away the bottom plastic piece and operate the machine upside down on the table with the internal workings exposed. I cannot multi-task while running the sheets through the machine. I have a butter knife on hand because about 75% of the time, I have to lift the edge from hanging up on the plastic cover on its way out of the roller. Then I have to make sure that the sheet stays flat while it passes through the exit slit. Those are the two possible hangups that can accordion up your sheet. And it happens 95% of the time. The one thing this laminator really needs is an input tray. I've noticed that a lot of these home laminator are missing an input tray. I'm sure it cuts down on the cost, but it's a bit tricky tryinig to get the sheet into the laminator nice and straight. If the sheet doesn't go in straight, you've made your chances of it screwing up increase 5-fold. I've helped combat this by putting a paper cutter (the kind with the big base and ruler lines) up against the front of the machine. This way I can help line up the sheet a little better than just eyeballing it. Because once that roller grabs the sheet, you can't really do anything about it (the release tab only works when the first part of the sheet comes out the exit slit enough for you to grab the sheet and pull while holding down the release tab). If it goes in too sideways, it will jam up and never get to the exit slit for you to grab and pull. Anyway, my point is that an input tray would just be a HUGE help and cut down on the jams, regardless of how many sheets you run through it. I have since purchased a Scotch brand home laminator. It was $15 more than this one, but well worth it. It has an input tray and I have laminated over 900 sheets with it and it's still going strong. Should have bought it from the get-go. A couple of tips I have learned that may help you: laminating is pretty forgiving. If the sheet accordions up and you can start flattening at least one side before it cools back down, you can just put it back through the machine a second time and that will fix your sheet pretty well. Also, if your sheet ends up so wonky that it actually crinkles/folds the paper up, you can cut the laminate around your sheet of paper as close as possible, put it in a new laminating sheet, and pass it back through the the machine. This also will straighten it out pretty well. I attached pictures of my Lego manual project. The picture of the red locomotive engine was a sheet that folded up the first pass through. It was really bad and I was freaking out, thinking it was ruined. But I cut the laminate really close to the paper, stuck it inside another laminating sheet and ran it through again and it came out pretty well, I think. I mean, it was REALLY folded up before.