Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I paid around twenty bucks for a department store blender the finally died after a decade and a half of use. I thought this one would be a great replacement, since several companies ranked it highly for blender in their 2017 reviews. After having bad luck with another KitchenAid product, I should have known not to spend the over one hundred dollars on their fancy blender. I took the chance, and in July 2017 I purchased the KitchenAid Diamond Blender. Forward only four months, and I'm stuck with a paperweight. We use the blender around once a week, usually to mix blend a shake or puree some berries. We don't use it daily, or blend anything that should put any workload on it that our old cheapie didn't continue to do for ages. Last week, while blending fruit to make a puree for fruit leather, the motor began smoking and the blender stopped. There should have been no way it overheated or overloaded mixing something like that for thirty seconds or so. I grabbed the blender and put it outside in case it was a fire hazard, and an hour or so later brought it back in to see if there might be a thermal protection reset of some kind. No luck. I tried contacting KitchenAid, and after a week, still haven't received a reply. If I'm able to get anywhere with them, I'll update the review. Until then, I'm giving it a one-star rating, and plan to avoid anything with the KitchenAid brand on it again.