Customer Reviews

Black & Decker DCM1400 Cafe Noir 10-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker, White

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Ordered it April 15th and it quit making coffee on August 6. I wouldn't buy another.

My husband bought me this coffee pot because I was insistent on a cone coffee filter. The only good things about this unit are the auto-off feature and the programmable clock. All others, are really poorly designed. For example, the water reservoir lid does not go all the way up while the carafe lid does not come off - end result is that when you fill the machine, water dribbles EVERYWHERE. For the same reason, coffee dribbles out of the pot when pouring it, so you have to pour it over the sink. The pause and serve feature is a spring rather than a lever mechanism, and after a few times of using the machine, the mechanism becomes shifted which means you can't PAUSE and SERVE.

All those complaints are minimal compared with the one main complaint that I have and that is that the coffee is never hot. I have to nuke my coffee in order to make it hot enough. I thought it was just me initially, but I had company over the other day and they said the same thing without prompting. Just generally a poor design, and goes to show you get what you pay for.

Very pleased with this model from Black & Decker. Top stays put unlike my old machine and the carafe is wide enough to get your hand in to clean it well. Wish they would work on a dripless carafe lip.

This coffeemaker worked well, but for only 3 months. There is nothing in the book about a warranty so guess it does not have one. I will not recommend this model.

Avoid this product. The carafe dribbles when you pour. In addition, the top does *not* pop off for easy cleaning, you hafta kinda pry it kinda open and wedge it into the dishwasher.

Otherwise a fine product. When they fix the carafe (I've contacted B&D) I'll recind this review.

UPDATE:

Within a few days of contacting B&D a brand new, perfectly good carafe showed up on my doorstep, gratis. Doesn't dribble but the lid still doesn't pop off for easy cleaning. If you want to take a chance on having to wait a couple days to maybe get a decent carafe, buy it, otherwise find a maker who does it right the first time.

If you google "dribbleglass" and "coffemaker" you'll see that other people have had this problem with B&D. There was a subtle difference in the spouts of the two carafes. I don't know why this happened, if it's a relatively rare manufacturing issue, a design flaw or a bad batch.

UPDATED UPDATE:

BTW, mine still works fine after more than three years of daily use. We have hard water and had to run vinegar or Lime Away through it every couple of months until we started using bottled water. We "retired" it when we got a Keurig for Christmas, but did use it around in February for entertaining. Nice machine. I've added two starts.

I can not actually rate the performance of the unit on its ability to make coffee because it was purchased as a replacement for a friend who's glass pot had broken. And by getting the exact same model, which is impossible locally when you live in a small town, nothing new needed to be learned.