Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Worked semi-well for 3 years - the temperature was always off but that’s a known issue. Put a thermometer in there to monitor and it was fine. Just adjusted the temp to get it where I wanted it. I purchased a cover to protect it from the elements and always used it, and it was on a covered porch outside. Despite that care, it stopped heating, I called customer support who was really nice and they recommended a new heating element. I purchased it and put it on. During the replacement I found out just how bad their craftsmanship is. There was a pop rivet inside the sealed cover to the power terminals - lord knows how that didn’t cause a short circuit and start a fire. Also, many screws were missing, and the star washer for the ground terminal was missing. After replacing the heating element the unit still didn’t heat, the controller shows it’s trying to heat, the power light is on, and the heat light is on so the controller is working. Time to go back to the drawing board and call the ever so friendly support staff again, they say to replace the spade terminals if I didn’t. I told them they looked fine but I changed them anyway. Still didn’t work. Now they say there is nothing I can do, it’s something in the body, and I’ll have to replace the entire body, they concede that will cost more than a new unit. I asked if I could remove the back and access the wiring and get parts if I find something wrong. They said no. This was upsetting since I only smoked a dozen times. I don’t have money to spare. So I took off the pop rivets off the sealed back plate to see if I could determine what the issue was. I found it right away. The entire back is packed in insulation but a small box can be removed that uncovers the terminals to the thermostat the controller senses with. One terminal looks burned or chared (smoked) and is dangling, the other looks terrible as well. I don’t know how they got this way since this area is completely sealed. It just got cooked because it’s directly attached to the back wall of the smoke box. Poor design and I bet a lot of people have this problem when their smoker isn’t “fixed” by swapping the heating element. The heating element could have simply been tested with a digital multimeter to ascertain it was still functional. FYI it should be around 17-18 ohms. If it’s an open circuit it’s bad.