Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was looking for a heavy duty blender for smoothies, particularly to crush ice quickly. This seemed a good choice but wow am I ever disappointed. Here are the reasons: 1. The mixer I feel has a design flaw. The picture has deep indentions, sort of a fluted effect, at the base. This means that all of your smoothie ingredients in. Pushed into those indentions and are completely missed by the blades. 2. The blades themselves are set one on top of the other. Again this appears to be a design flaw. They should be offset so that each set is hitting your blendable ingredients differently. I thought perhaps this was something that had happened in transit and tried to correct but they are locked tight one on the other with both blade sets pointing in the same direction. All in all, a waste of money. I've tried 2 different smoothies. I tried using it to crush Ritz crackers. I even tried using it to cut up mushrooms. No matter what I put into it, all the ingredients end up pushed into those large indentions and nothing gets mixed or cut. Even fresh banana stayed whole. It's simply unusable!