Juiceman Jr. Warning.

****UPDATE! Check out the email from Leon Dreimann, president of Salton Maxim, at the bottom of this page.****

Thinking about buying a Juiceman Jr. from Salton-Maxim? I did. It turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. I want to warn others about the Juiceman Jr., which I believe to be an inferior product.

I have been using the regular Juiceman II model for several months and have been quite pleased with it. I do a lot of travel, and wanted a smaller juicer that I could take with me on business trips. I called Salton-Maxim and ordered the Juiceman Junior for $79.95, a decision I would live to regret. I was away on an extended trip when the Juiceman Junior was sent to my house, and I didn't get a chance to even open it until a few weeks later. When I finally tried it out, I was extremely disappointed with it. The juice it makes is vastly inferior to that of other juicers I have used. It has an extremely low juice yield with an unacceptable amount of pulp in the juice. The unit is not all that much smaller than the regular Juiceman II, but the basket is much smaller and gets clogged up much faster. Trying to juice carrots with the Juiceman Junior was an exercise in futility. After reading through the materials included with the machine, I found that it's only 1/4 horsepower, and Jay Kordich, the "Juiceman" himself, has long said that a juicer should be at least 1/2 horsepower!

Needless to say, I wanted my money back. I packed the juicer up and mailed it back to Salton-Maxim at my own expense, with a letter saying how dissatisfied I was with the machine and asking to please credit my Visa card. A few days later I received a call from one of Salton-Maxim's customer service representatives saying they got the juicer back but that they could not give me a refund because I had sent it back more than thirty days after I had ordered it. I explained that I do a lot of travel (which is why I bought the Junior model) and that I had been away and had not had a chance to try it out earlier. She didn't care. After all, the "policy" is that if something is sent back more than thirty days after the date of purchase the customer will not get a refund, but rather store credit for future purchases.

A man named Ron got on the phone and gave an eloquently incoherent explanation about the company policy, about how it was my fault because I should have sent the juicer back sooner, and that he would not give me a refund. "Ron, this is not good customer service," I said. "It's not a question of customer service," he said, "It's the policy..."

Not a question of customer service? Amazing, considering how most businesses (the ones that know how to conduct business) practically bend over backwards to achieve customer satisfaction . I have bought items in Sears, Penney's, K-Mart, and other stores that gladly refund the purchase price of an item if the customer is in any way dissatisfied. These are the businesses that know how to deal effectively with people, unlike Salton-Maxim who put a person through the ringer just for trying to get a refund of $79.95!

I told Ron that store credit would not be acceptable, that he was to credit my Visa card for the full amount. I hung up the phone. Later in the day I called Visa to see if it had been credited. It hadn't.

So, it looks like I'm out $79.95 plus the $5 it cost to ship the juicer back to Salton-Maxim.

This is a perfect illustration of how NOT to do business. Stores like Sears, KMart, etc., know that if a customer is happy, they'll come back. They'll tell their friends about the good experience. I am a major juice enthusiast and have recommended Salton-Maxim's products to many people. Not anymore!

Dear Consumer,

Your Juiceman Jr. warning was brought to my attention by one of our employees.

I was disappointed to hear of the misunderstanding that transpired upon your return of the Juiceman Jr. Through a set of circumstances that I will attempt to explain to you a human error has occurred.

When you ordered the Juiceman Jr. from our company, to speed up your delivery, the person who received the order had asked our retail outlet in Gurnee Mills, Illinois to send out your order. Ron, the manager of the outlet store, has a "no refund" policy as do most of the outlet stores in that center. This policy has nothing to do with any internet or any other direct orders sent through this Company and a refund should have been processed for you immediately upon receipt of the returned product.

I have, under separate cover, send a letter to the store asking our manager to look up our records and credit your Visa account, but to speed things up, I would appreciate you e-mailing me directly with the details of the Visa card used and the dollar amount including tax will be credited.

As you appear to be an avid juicer, using the Juiceman II, using a Juiceman Jr. would be a major difference, but I hope you can appreciate that as one product has a retail of $200.00 and a Juiceman Jr. is $80.00, a major performance difference would exist. Juiceman Jr., at 1/4 horsepower is still 50% more efficient than many other competitors' products that use lower wattage "horsepower".

The product is designed for an occasional juicer and has been sold to first time juicers who may eventually upgrade if they become frequent juicers.

Our Company has been in existence since 1947 and we do take pride in our products and wish to provide the best customer service possible. However, you can surely appreciate human errors do occur and I hope you accept our apologies in the spirit that it is offered.

Sincerely yours, Leon Dreimann President/CEO