Comically bad design - a review

I just submitted this review to Amazon. I’m sharing it here for reasons which I believe will become obvious.

---

“Ridiculously bad design”

I had an Avalon water cooler. It was easy to use and easy to clean. It served us well for 5 years, until it started leaking from the cold water spout. So I shopped around, and decided to replace it with the Igloo black plastic, top-loading water cooler. Wow, what a difference. The design and engineering of this “Igloo Top Loading Water Cooler for Hot & Cold Dispenser” is almost comically bad.

To start off with, the manual is poorly written and obviously wrong. When you first plug the cooler in, make sure the hot and cold switches are OFF, not on like the manual says.

I started by cleaning the cooler, inside and out. The first thing I found was a torn strip of plastic along the bottom. Apparently, the front cover didn’t quite fit, so the factory guys just jammed it on there until it did. That sheared off a three inch long line. Not a great start. At least it didn’t shatter.

How do I get off the collar so I can clean it? The manual doesn’t give a single clue. You have to rotate it to the left while gently pushing down, then pull it up after it unlocks. I cleaned the collar with soap and water. I notice something odd - there are no drain holes in the bottom of the collar. So your water bottle will never completely drain into the vessel below. There will always be a puddle in the bottom of the collar. Yeah, I’m sure that’s hygienic. I’m going to have to drill some holes in it myself.

After that, I go back to the cooler. There are easily noticeable smudges everywhere I touched it. This smooth (mostly), shiny (mostly) black plastic shows fingerprints worse than stainless steel. Where do they find these materials?

Then I washed out the vessel with a gallon of water with a tablespoon or so of bleach in it. Let it set for ten minutes to kill whatever was in it from the factory. Drain from the hot and cold spouts until they stop running, then drain from the plug in the back. Simple. Easy. (The drain plug isn’t mentioned anywhere in the instructions, by the way.) I finished draining it, and heard water still sloshing. I looked in the top - there’s still about a pint of water visible. They didn’t run the drain line from the bottom of the vessel. I’m sure that’s hygienic, too. After all, who wants all the water to drain out of the container when you drain it? I’m sure water-born diseases are a myth, and the residual bleach will just add flavor.

Why don’t I just carry it to the sink, turn it upside down, and dump the water out? Because the opening at the top of the water vessel is wider than the hole in the plastic housing. If I dump the water, it will go everywhere inside the cooler. You know, down onto all that exposed wiring in the bottom. What genius engineered this cooler to put the electric cord directly below the drain plug, anyways?

Oh, by the way, I got small chunks of plastic out when I drained it. Good thing I did this, even though the manual doesn’t tell you to clean it out before use. Oh, and something the manual doesn’t mention at all - if you fill your cooler with spring or tap water (which tastes better than distilled), calcium will slowly build up inside the cooler. The way you clear that out: drain the cooler, mix a 5% solution of citric acid crystals in water, pour it in, let it sit for 20 minutes while you run the heater, then drain and rinse thoroughly. Do this once every six months or so (depending on the hardness of the water you use), and you’ll keep your cooler’s pipes from clogging up.

I rinsed it out five times, first with hot, then with cold. Since I can’t get all the water out, I’ll just have to settle for diluting it. After the last (partial) draining, I put it into position, plugged it in (making sure the switches were off), and filled it back up with water. I reattached the collar, then I put the 5 gallon bottle on. That went smoothly.

Then I turned it on. First the cold switch, then, a few seconds later, the hot. (Never turn them both on at the same time. That can blow the fuse this thing allegedly has inside somewhere.) The cooler didn’t leak, and it didn’t catch fire. It heated the water up relatively quickly, so I poured a cup. With my Avalon cooler, after I poured a cup of hot water, the heater would turn back on immediately. Not so with the Igloo. I guess they don’t want you to have two cups of hot water in a row.

I tasted the water. It tasted like hot plastic. I’m not sure what I expected. I forgot to run the heater while I was cleaning it out. That was my mistake.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. The spouts aren’t near the front of the cooler, where they’d be easily accessible. They’re positioned near the rear of the available area, just in front of the back wall. You’ve got to put your cup all the way against the back to make sure you’re not going to just pour the water straight down into the drip pan.

While I was doing this, I finally noticed a cosmetic design flaw. There are no markings on the cooler to indicate where the hot and cold spouts are. No, they’re not directly under the buttons. They’re over the largest holes in the drip pan - which you can’t actually see if you’re trying to fill something from the cooler. You could only see where the spouts are if you’re a toddler, or lying on your back on the floor. And even then, everything is black on black. So I got a couple of Post-It flags and stuck them on the front.

It’s been an hour now. It didn’t leak. It didn’t catch fire. The compressor for the cooler isn’t obnoxiously loud. It seems to work. Two stars, do not recommend. I’ll keep it, but I’ll never buy anything from Igloo again.