Electric Counter Top Grill

This electric BBQ seemed like a good idea last summer to be used in our 3 season porch in the winter time. We live in Minnesota and shoveling snow to get to our briquette BBQ can be hazardous to your health.Electric grill arrived and a notice came with it the grill could only be plugged into a 30 amp breaker, 99% of the homes in our area only have 20 amp breakers.$400 later the electric grill was plugged into a 30 amp breaker only to show us a bright blue flash.I called the manufacturer and they said the retailer where I had purchased the grill was not an authorized agent of theirs, therefore no warranty. The retailer I purchased the grill from sold through amazon so I contacted Amazon. The manufacturer of the grill contacted me again and asked how they could help; apparently they got a call from someone at amazon.I told them about the blue flash of light and then nothing, no heating no lights came on no nothing. They said I could pay the freight and send it back and pay the freight or they would send me aboard free of charge. I said send the board and that was mistake, you really have to spend time to get the board in and it still didn't work. Phoned the manufacturer and told them it didn't work and the representative instructed me to send it to some place in Texas or Arizona not California where the grill manufacturer was located. Paid for the shipping, sent the grill and it came back and worked fine, but It had notice that I had not seen before and it said do not operate if temperature is below 38 degrees, now I live in Minnesota and planned on having a winter grill. Another call to the manufacturer and the representative said probably heating up the LED system with a hair dryer would solve the 38 degree problem.By now you may be wondering why didn't this old man just send it back and get a refund, I tried and the manufacturer said they couldn't do that and besides I already had the $400 into running anew 30 amp line.We never use it, it has too many bad memories to think we could have a nice meal prepared on it and now it sits with its black cover on it like a shroud.

We live on the 8th floor of a condo in Florida and can't have a gas grill, hence our need to purchase this one. We love it! It heats up pretty quick and we can get it well over 500 degrees to sear the steaks or whatever we're cooking. Unlike a gas grill it does seem much harder to keep the inside clean, but that's not a major issue. It has an auto shut off in case you forget to turn it off, especially handy if I'm hitting the wine while I'm grilling.It's not inexpensive, but it is a quality grill.

I live on the 18th floor of a building which does not allow gas or charcoal grills. I bought this Fire Magic electric grill because I assumed it was very good quality from the high price (I believe that you get what you pay for) and from the excellent Fire Magic gas grill that I own at my vacation house. This was an inaccurate assumption on my part.This thing has broken 3 times and is now a useless heap of stainless steel. I store citronella candles and bug spray inside of it. For this use, it is performing well. I would have thrown it away by now, except that I do not even know where to get rid of something like this. I can't just put this down the garbage chute in my condo. Do I contract with a junk hauler? Do I rent a pick-up truck and take it to a scrap yard?Each of the previous 2 times this grill broke, the digital LED module had gone out. Recently, I have replaced the same LED module AGAIN and the grill still does not turn on. This is very frustrating and the manufacturer does NOT STAND BEHIND THEIR PRODUCT. I live in a city of over 1 million people and no one I call has any idea what to do, including the Fire Magic dealer.I work in investments, so I did a little research. I believe that this company is owned by a leveraged Wall Street private equity firm which means that basically their business model is to starve the company to death by cutting expenses in order to make the cash flow of Fire Magic higher than it was when they purchased the business. After this, they pretend that they have grown the company's cash flow sustainably and then flip the business to another firm. I know you are probably saying, "great, thanks for the finance lesson, what does this mean?"Well, it means that the banksters that own Fire Magic have no incentive to preserve the long-term reputation of the brand or remediate the dissatisfaction of their customers since their primary objective is to maximize cash flow in the short term and then flip the company to someone else, ideally within the calculated theoretical most-valuable-length-to-own-a-leveraged-company of 4.7 years. Consequences of this hilariously dysfunctional way to run a business include declining quality and unresponsive customer service. It shows because here I am, a busy guy, spending my time ripping a grill on Amazon when I could instead be doing something fun...like having a barbecue, for instance.I will not buy another Fire Magic product even though the gas grill I have in Florida is very nice. When something goes wrong, you can't count on these people to make it right. If anyone has any ideas on where to dispose of a useless 2 year old grill, let me know. Until then, it will be doing a bang-up job storing my citronella candles and bug spray.