Customer Reviews

Cuisinart 12-cup Programmable Thermal Coffeemaker

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

 

 

This machine is from hell - save your money.

Every tenth brew the cap and filter misalign, causing messy overflow. One overflow leads to another because grounds get into the cap and clog it. Mine is in the trash and cannot be incinerated too soon!

I was looking for a coffee machine with a thermal caraffe. At first, the cofee was great. Then a couple of weeks later, coffee started to pour directly out of the machine onto the floor! I thought maybe I had a bad machine, so I took it back to the store and exchanged it for a new one. A month later, same problem! The coffee pours around the caraffe, not into it. I burned myself trying to clean it up, and it stained my nice kitchen floors. I'm taking it back for a different brand coffee maker, I won't be fooled three times!

I've owned this coffee maker for about 4 years. It finally stopped working, but I must say - it "died" after 4 years of continuous daily use. I programmed it each evening and had hot coffee (very hot) waiting for me each morning. My spouse and I use large thermal cups to take to work, and so the 12 cup carafe has been more than enough coffee.
The only problem I found when first using this machine, is if you do not seat the cup that holds the coffee grinds perfectly or the carafe perfectly, you may find puddles of coffee on your counter. I learned this early on, and always made sure that everything was properly set up and had no further episodes of "floods". I also stopped using paper filters and bought a re-usable washable filter from wal mart for about $5. which works fine. No noticeable change in coffee taste, no grinds or grit in my coffee.
I am a typical fussy coffee drinker, and with a little experimenting with the amount of coffee to use, I got my brew to where I like it. I'm now shopping on Amazon, looking for a replacement,and I am going to order the same cofee maker again. After reading some of the reviews for coffee makers with carafes, for over $250, I think this is a good choice.
Also, I program it to make the coffee around 4:30 am, and when I set it up, usually around 5 or 6 pm, the coffee I pour out at the end of the day is usually still steaming!

This is the only 12-cup thermal carafe coffee maker I've been able to find, and it's at a decent price. So what's the problem? The machine is supremely finicky about: 1) placement of the filter holder in the basket; 2) closing the swinging basket against the main unit; and 3) placement of the carafe beneath the basket. It's surprisingly easy to get any of those three just slightly wrong, and easy to miss that they aren't quite square. And the result if ANY of the three "moving parts" is even minutely "off" is coffee all over your counter and floor. We've owned the machine for seven or eight months, and manage to wash the floor with Starbucks at least once a month - and we're forewarned and pretty careful! Too bad - it makes good coffee but who wants to slurp it off the tile?

Is there anything worse than to be up at 5am with your infant, waiting for your morning coffee to brew only to find it all over the counter, cabinets and floor! What's worse than having to clean an enormous, scalding hot mess?--> Having to do it first thing in the morning before your coffee!!!
I've owned this coffee maker for a year.... Found out about this 'little' design flaw early on. I know how to align and check everything and this still periodically happens. Nearly every time we have houseguests, if someone else makes the coffee, it happens to them...poor things. Anyhow, there's gotta be a better machine out there and I will find it..I'm not drinking my a.m. coffee at 3pm so this machine is NOT WORTH THE GIGANTIC pain in the a$$ of cleaning the mess!

This machine has worked fine for years and makes great coffee...

Bad side is that if you do not seat the filter basket perfectly or if a ground or two clogs up the little hole, coffee runs out all over the floor.

And the most irritating thing is the beeps when the machine finishes. They are loud enough to wake the house and there is no way to shut them off.

C'mon Cuisinart. give the consumer some control.

This is a good machine for the money and the coffee tastes good from this machine and stays hot in the carafe for about four hours. The idea of the carafe is good because the coffee stays hot and tastes better because it doesn't burn on a warmer. There are several design problems however. 1. it poors too slowly out of the carafe. 2. the filter door is tricky to open. 3. the carafe top doesn't screw on easily. 4. the "poor while you brew" feature is touchy and coffee leaks because the spring designed to stop the coffee flow seems weak. I've had the unit for about three months and the writing on the control panel is wearing off.

This is a great coffeemaker! However, I have also experienced the same problem with overflows. After one exchange, we discovered the trick - DON'T GET COFFEE GROUNDS IN THE LID. If you end up with coffee grounds at the bottom of the basket that holds the filter, it can easily clog the lid, and will start to overflow. Now we just make sure to put the grounds in the filter, and then the filter in the basket - no more issues. And, it makes great coffee that stays fresh all day!

If it is possible to fall in love with a coffee maker, it has finally happened to me. It fills all my requirements. It makes 12 cups directly into a thermal pot and keeps it hot all day. It is prgrammable so that my coffe is ready in the morning when I am. The plate under the pot is sealed so that if some coffee or water gets under the pot, the electronics is not destroyed. I can't begin to tell you how many Mr. Coffee's I had that were ruined this way.

It fits all my requirements, makes perfect coffee, and I have had this one for two years and still going strong. What's not to love!

First off, I LOVE the coffee this machine makes, and the thermal carafe is GREAT--no burnt coffee taste you get with the burner plate models. That said, I've gone thru two of these coffee makers in 17 months and won't get another. With the first, after 6 months the pre-brew function timer stopped working. I didn't use it much, so decided to live without that. But 4 months later it stopped brewing entirely--it would "beep" it was done, but no coffee had brewed :-( It was replaced--I had option of going with another brand/model but I stayed with this one, b/c, as said, I LOVE the coffee and the thermal carafe. Now replacement, after 4 months, stopped working. But this time I was there when it went bad--was brewing a second pot of coffee and smoke started pouring out the top of the machine. It smelled like an electric fire. I turned it off, unplugged, and poured cold water in the back, just in case that would help. After that, it is dead--I tried turning it on again to see what would happen (we really wanted coffee), but it just "beeped" that it was done, with no brewing. I don't know what burnt up, but I won't risk an electric fire with another one. I'll miss the great coffee & the thermal carafe, so hope Cuisinart figures out the problem and fixes it for future models. A coffee pot at this price should last a few years at least.