Litter-Robot III Open Air Automatic Self-Cleaning Litter Box

I purchased this product from their website (where it's significantly cheaper, btw) about three years ago. Let me just say that if you buy it, BUY THE WARRANTY. YOU WILL NEED IT. Thing thing breaks CONSTANTLY. The warranty they offered when I bought it was I believe a year; in that year period, I sent it back 4-5 times for the same issue, which I now know was a faulty DFI. The DFI is the Drawer Full Indicator; it senses when the waste drawer is full, and will not allow the unit to cycle until it's emptied. It's a known and popular issue with their units that they don't seem inclined to fix. Even with newer models, you can find similar complaints all over their technical issues board. When the DFI breaks, the litter box will get stuck mid-cycle, leaving nowhere for your cats to go until you physically return the globe to the home position, or eventually refuse to cycle at ALL, no matter if the drawer is empty or what you do. The litter box then turns into a massive, expensive, glorified regular box that you still have to scoop.Once your warranty is up, YOU will be expected to purchase the new DFI indicators and replace them yourself. They are $86 with shipping, and you have to de-assemble the entire bottom of the litter robot and mess with wiring/cables to replace them. Pray you do it right, because you sure as heck don't want to buy another set to replace!It's ridiculous, really. For the price of the thing, you would think it would work for more than 1-2 years without constantly having issues that need repaired. It's wonderful and convenient when it works, but I've had so much frustration with it that I wish I'd never bothered.

The bags they try to get you to buy aren't sufficiently sized to cover the whole bin so litter pools around the bags within the bin creating messes.Even when buying better litter liner bags and wrapping the whole of the bin in the bag, litter still gets UNDER the bin leading to messes that need to be cleaned up.Litter gets all around in internal mechanisms of the unit leading to premature breakdowns and many more messes.Litter just piles up in the same spot of the bin which needs shaking and re-adjusting almost daily to disperse evenly.

I can go on the robot 3 website and buy new for 499.99 instead of over 800.

Absolute waste of money. This worked for about six months with minimal use in our home (it is the cats’ least favorite pan and in an out of the way location). After six months, the issues began. It ALWAYS thinks that the drawer is full and refuses the cycle. The drawer will be empty and it will move about a centimeter, then stop. I unplug, wait, plug it back in, and it moves another centimeter and then stops. This was a huge waste of money (and time... the amount of time I have spent trying to get this running...). What a great concept marred by truly poor design and a lack of customer service.