The Iceman RJ56-DIS is a shining example of Chinese quality control. It arrives non-working. Manufacturer has hidden the device category and model number so you cannot register it. When you email the manufacturer you get an instant auto-spam that it will be 5-7 days before they even look at your email.
If all I wanted was cold water, you can get cold water dispensers for around $100. This is a north of $400 dispenser I bought because I wanted ice. I drink an awful lot of iced tea and other beverages I put ice in. Didn’t purchase an icemaker in refrigerator because I didn’t wan’t to run a water line that would break when break when I wasn’t home, flooding the place. Had that happen in a corporate housing unit one day after I moved in. Cleaning crew must have moved the fridge when cleaning. Those plastic lines get brittle fast. Water went through the floor and got the condo down below. Great way to meet the neighbors!
With this, water damage would be limited to 5 gallon if it sprung any kind of leak.
RJ56-DIS Classic Failure
There are certain books I recommend to all who want to manage or get into IT.
Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions
The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
There are a handful of others but I’m not in my office so don’t remember exact enough titles to find them. I’ve written about The Secrets of Consulting before. Somewhere, in my list of five or so books, is the story of the new customer service system.
New Customer Service System
Company A was having fantastic growth. The widget they were making was increasing in sales every month. Customer service had originally only been three people working phones and fax machines. (We didn’t have email or Internet then.) As sales climbed so did the number of people in customer service. They were now over 15 people and still overrun.
Management decided they needed a new customer service system so they could handle more volume due to all of the product failures in the field. They brought in the Big 6 consulting firms and due to federal regulations brought in a small independent consultant.
The Big 6 consulting firms docked. Dumped out armies of kids not old enough to shave which occupied every conference room and deployed their “methodology.” Management spent several million dollars just paying for the bids which all came in north of ten million dollars because the Big 6 won’t develop a system for less.
The Independent Consultant
Independent consultant went to speak with the exacerbated customer service reps. Found out over 90% of the product failures were exactly the same. Most units could be easily fixed once returned.
Next the independent consultant went to the shop floor, some place Big 6 didn’t venture. You could get dirty out there! The tiny testing area informed him they were lightly testing 5% of production and only intensely testing 1% because the intense testing tended to destroy the product.
Proposal submitted took up one sheet of paper.
- Move the non-destructive portions of intense testing into the light testing steps.
- Increase light testing to 10% of production.
- Increase intense testing to 3% of production.
- Move half of customer service personnel to product testing.
- Keep same customer service system.
- You need a lower failure rate, not a new customer service system.
Customer service management didn’t like the idea of losing half their people. Upper management who had enjoyed power lunches with the kids not old enough to shave refused to admit they spent millions of dollars getting a forest of worthless paper. The owner, however, listened.
Summary
This product suffers from non-existent quality control. I am 99.999% certain the actuator contact behind the ice press bar is either bad or the wiring is unhooked. No parts list available. No exploded diagram. No easy way inside the machine to fix an obvious manufacturing f-up. This unit was also never tested at the factory. Plug it in, press the button, listen for sound of motor turning. Had they done that they would have known this unit was junk.
Instead, RJ Brands, LLC. who owns the Iceman and Chefman registered trademarks chose to hide RJ56-DIS on the web site so you couldn’t register for support. Emailing customer service requires 5-7 days for them to even look at your email. I’m certain they are calling in big consulting firms to design a new customer service system to handle all the volume.
It would make too much sense to actually test the product prior to shipping. That would violate all Chinese manufacturing standards.
Now I have to figure out how to drain this thing after the ice melts so I can take it to Target and they can ship me yet another untested hunk of shit for a replacement.
