Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was reluctant to replace my old Charlescraft after something like 20 years but, reading the glowing reviews for the Zojirushi, I took the plunge. And, boy, am I sorry I did. I would NEVER buy this again. Never, ever, ever. First, the good. The machine is beautiful, durable, and well-designed. Superb directions, well-crafted recipes, and the top-browner is an excellent addition. But it ends there. After using the machine for four months, and a total of maybe 20 loaves, one of the paddles stopped turning. It seems a small part underneath the pan had broken. I contacted Zojirushi, since it was under warranty, and they told me... It was MY fault. Somehow. It would cost $95 to replace it. I balked. After an email exchange, they reluctantly relented, sending me a new one and saying to send back the old one at my expense. After receiving the new one, they said to keep the old one. Well, OK. Now, it's maybe 8 months later, and the paddles have COMPLETELY stripped. ***I found streaks of metal inside a bread.*** The metal is probably coated with teflon (or similar), meaning we were eating that for a while. I tried taking the paddles off the old pan to find they were partly stripped as well. So: we had eaten that metal as well. Game over, as far as I'm concerned. As an aside, a good deal of flour had wafted over the side of the pan, settled below, picked up moisture from the air, and had mold spores growing inside the machine. I kept cleaning it, but it happened consistently. I'm not making anything particularly complicated or tough to knead. And I did have another machine for 20 years that had made at least 500 loaves, and whose paddles didn't strip. It's possible this is a defective machine, but I don't have any recourse, really. I guess I will just toss it (bye-bye, $300), since I don't want to feed my family more metal and I don't want others to, either. EDIT from a week later: I wrote to the company explaining the situation. So far, no response. So, to the rest, add apathetic customer service.