Oster 6684 12-Speed Blender, Black
|
Product Details Manufacturer: Oster Brand: Oster Release Date: 2004-10-19 Model: 6684 Color: Black Product features:
|
Price List for Oster 6684 12-Speed Blender, Black
| New | New Usually ships in 2-3 business days | $36.50 | ||
| Used | Used Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $19.99 |
Your purchase is protected by the A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee. Amazon.com automatically transfers your payment to the merchant so you'll never need to pay a merchant directly. Amazon.com A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee covers both the delivery of your item and its condition upon receipt.
Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of the Oster 6684 12-Speed Blender, Black
Customer Review: works well, but manfacturer makes it difficult to fix simple problem yourself
Summary: 4 Stars
I actually own the Oster 6646 but am writing the review here because the 6646 appears to be no longer caried by Amazon and the 6684 is simply the black version of the 6646.
First, the good: This blender does a very good job of blending ingredients, including frozen ones, into drinks of consistent texture. No lumpy pieces of fruit or bits of ice hiding in the drink. It also does a good job of pulling the ingredients down the side of the jar and around the blades so that everything gets blended properly.
Now, the bad: Shortly after my 1-year warranty expired, I turned on my blender one day and it abruptly turned off after about one second. I actually think this was my fault as I didn't have the jar seated quite right and I had some ice cubes at the bottom of the jar right by the blades. At any rate, to make a long story short I was left with the option to either (a) pay to get the blender repaired, which would have cost over half what one costs new; (b) throw the blender away; or (c) try to fix the thing myself. I had a hunch that perhaps I could find a fuse inside that had blown, so I attempted to take apart the blender. I tried A LOT of different screwdrivers, both at home and at work, and I could not get any of them to grip the screws properly to remove them. I took the blender to my local hardware store and, after a lot of patience, was finally able to remove the screws. While I readily found a fuse, the hardware store said they didn't have a matching replacement fuse. A little frustrated but still determined, I went to yet another hardware store; a seemingly knowledgeable clerk there told me that I would probably have a hard time finding the proper fuse because of the filament design, even though the fuse is labeled as a 5 amp 125 volt fuse. Still determined, I went to Radio Shack. Though they did not have a fuse that looked the same in terms of filament, the guy there assured me that a slow blowing 5 amp 250 volt fuse should work just fine. And guess what -- he was right. So now I have an additional three back up fuses in case it blows again, for a total out of pocket cost of less than 10% what a new blender would cost. Now my search is on for replacement screws so I can attach the bottom of the unit to the base again.
I guess I can't totally fault Oster for not making a consumer level repair more easy. I think this is true across the board for consumer electronics today. Still, I hate to think of all of the perfectly good machines out there that get tossed in the garbage and end up in a landfill (even though there are toxic components inside) that just maybe would be put back into service by the people who owned them if the manufacturer gave simple instructions for something as simple as replacing a fuse and didn't assemble the device so as to discourage people from trying to take it apart.