Sorry to hear about your troubles with these machines guys (must be made by Mission). Ours has worked great (knock on wood)!
Mine was green tagged "$99-last in stock" at Home Depot last fall when they started cleaning out for winter inventory.
Remember these do not have refrigeration, so you need let the first batches of ice cool down the interior before they start to make hardy ice. The first few batches are throw out little mutants. Once the basket fills the first time, ours produces at least one batch of large cubes every ten minutes. I quickly run out of space in the freezer to store the ice after 4 or 5 hours so I just let it fill up and use it from there.
I'm an ice chewer, and after watching the news story on that kids science project last year where she found more bacteria in the McDonald's ice machine than in their toilet, I save the bagged ice for non-consuming uses
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