Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Are you one of the unlucky ones who've purchased this coffeemaker only to be disgusted by the liquid plastic taste and smell? So was I. I decided on the FlexBrew because it meets every need that we have, and as far as I can tell Hamilton Beach is the only company that's invented a dual carafe/k-cup model. I'm an avid Amazon shopper, but decided to buy mine in a local store in case we didn't like it, it would be easier to return. I picked one up a local store last week. Came home, unpacked it on the kitchen table. The first thing that hit me was that plastic odor. Now, I know I have a 'smeller' that is above-average, so I thought..."it's just me." But when my husband, who normally can't smell a darn thing, came home from work, he was barely in the back door before he asked me if I had burned something plastic. I spent the next 3 days reading tips online and trying everything. I cleaned it with white vinegar. I cleaned it with baking soda. I used Dawn. I even tried a vodka-cleaning solution that I saw. Ran 2 quarts of vinegar through both sides. The carafe-side filter seemed to fare a little better, smelled about 60% better. But the K-cup apparatus still stunk to high heaven. It seemed to be the worst offender. We spent the next 3 days making coffee in it, and soaking the parts every night, but you could still taste the plastic in the coffee. It permeates your head...for hours afterwards it's in your mouth, in your throat, in your sinuses. Well, you know the deal. I hated to give up on the Flexbrew because I really want those features! I was confused how there could be 850 reviews with only a small percentage of people complaining of the plastic smell. Does everyone else not notice this? How could that be possible? I was perplexed. Then I stumbled upon a short review written by a woman who said she had the bad smell, returned her unit for another one, and the new one had no smell. What? Could this be a production issue? Maybe an attempt to use a cheaper plastic at a factory in China? Some guy asleep at the wheel filled the vat with the wrong chemical? LOL Who knows...but at least I discovered that there's a mix of good units and bad units out there. Now, to find a good one. I went online and searched around to find out which of my local stores had the Flexbrew in stock. Took a trip today another big box store. I explained my dilemma to a sales associate, and told her if she would allow me to open the box so I could sniff inside, she could help prevent me having to return the item. She said 'sure no problem!' and then opened up the box and lifted up the plastic bag covering the coffee maker. I took a good whiff and....nothing! Smelled like a normal coffee maker! A tiny hint of plastic, of course, that you would find in any new plastic item. But not that disgusting strong burnt plastic smell. If you haven't purchased one at all yet and you want to try the 'sniff test' in a store, believe me when I say you'll know it when you smell it. It's that strong. And if you get a chance to pull out the little drawer that holds the k-cup apparatus, that's the stinkiest piece. So I guess my advice is, if you're like me and you really REALLY want to keep your coffee maker but you can't live with that taste...send it back and try another one. I don't know if this will be helpful at all, but I'll include it: there's a "series" number stamped on the bottom of the box. It's just pressed in to the cardboard, not printed. So you'll have to put your readers on and find it. It's also located on the bottom of the coffee maker, next to the Model #. My 'stinky' unit had a series #B2841CZ. My good unit has a series #B384111. I'm sure there's a lot of series numbers out there, and I don't know if it means anything but I just thought I'd throw that out there. If anyone reading this has a stinky one and they want to comment with their series number, please do so. Maybe we can figure something out and help isolate the issue for future buyers. If you're wondering if it is BPA free...so was I but it seems to be a great secret. I finally found it in a Q&A section on another website. Hamilton Beach answered the question themselves, and they said that any plastic that comes into contact with the water OR the coffee is BPA free. Finally, I will mention that the reason I gave it a 3-star review is that I averaged out 2 things....5 stars for the features but only 1 star for the fact that it's taken me 7 days and 3 trips to the store to solve the plastic taste problem. I hope my review helps somebody out there! Update February 25, 2016: Sad to report that today is the day that the Flexbrew died. At the ripe old age of 16 months. We really disliked it anyway, so I'm kind of glad to see it go. I'm sure it's out of warranty by now but I won't even bother to check because the last thing I want is for the company to send us another one of these...we'd probably end up with one that has been returned for the stinky plastic smell. Anyway, here's how it died: a few weeks ago I noticed that when using the K-Cup side, it got so hot that it melted & shrunk the K-cups. It had always shrunk the K-cups a little bit (I was always worried about the effect of that melting plastic on our health), but this time it shrunk the K-cups about 30%. ( I use the original Green Mountain cups, not any of the cheap generics that have been coming on the market lately) Anyway, the K-cup would shrink enough that the grounds inside would get pushed up to the top of the cup and up out the hole and into my coffee cup. So every K-cup coffee that I made was full of grounds. We then stopped using the K-cup side and only used the coffee pot. Then for the last few days, my husband said that although we had the timer set to start at the same time we always did in the morning, when he went to get his coffee it wasn't done percolating yet. This morning I thought I would try running vinegar through it a few times to clean it out, which I occasionally do, but today it just finally gave out. It's not heating up the water in the reservoir, so nothing comes out. So I'll be out looking for another coffee maker today, and be sure it won't be a Hamilton Beach product. I'm done with that company for sure. I've seen the price on these units coming down to around $59, they sell them at a local grocery store chain now and there we even a Groupon for them to unload all of the reconditioned ones. For those of you who already own this, I wish you all luck with your brewers. And if you're just thinking about buying one now, consider yourself warned! Also I'm changing my rating from 3 stars to 1 now.