Automatic litterbox reviews: It makes YOU the biggest LitterMaid of all!

Americans have a strong faith that technology will improve their lives, so it's always fun to see our patience get tapped by a poorly designed product. My favorite example of this is the line of LitterMaid automatic or "self-cleaning" cat litter boxes. When I need a good laugh I just sort the latest LitterMaid reviews on Amazon by "Rating: Low to High". Here are some choice quotes:

LitterMaid LM500 Automated Litter Box

I read all the reviews saying this thing sucked, and I thought, Well I'm an engineer, I can handle it but I was Wrong. I even got the older model LM500 hoping that it would work, but it didn't.
In the automatic rake thing, there are several plastic parts put, not glued or secured together. The first couple of times the rake went offline (because of excessively large dump - this happened at least 4-5 times per day despite filling litter to lower than the mark and using premium litter etc), the little plastic parts would pop out and the rake would go offtrack. Once this started happening, the plastic pieces would pop off every time. I tried glueing it, rubberbands, etc. Nothing worked. I feel really stupid for having read all the reviews and still buying it. Look at the content of the reviews. People describe intimately what is wrong with the product (rake broken, off track, etc) and how they tried to fix it. This should tell you how involved the owner got to try and get it to work. For me this meant getting cat piss all over myself, litter in my eyes, and messing with it everyday until the day, only three weeks after I got it, when it refused to work whatsoever.
Now I have this gigantic plastic piece of cat piss smelling garbage sitting around that I have to repackage and mail back. This is just not worth it. My brother has one, and it works, but it's just luck of the draw whether you get it to work or not. But judging from all the negative reviews, odds are against you.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3UV59VLA3XBVK

I got more [poop] flicked in my face in 1 month then in 15 years in the veterinary business.
Emptying the poop containers flicks sand and poop in you face and mouth. Also, litter rake would clump and you had to clean it by hand. The plastic must have been poop bonding material because you could never get it clean. After 2 weeks , it started throwing poop clumps acrosss the floor. Somehow the rake got stuck and preassure woud build and thwack! Poop and urine would fly. don't waste your money
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ULXRUI9MSTLI

In particular, whatever plastic is used seems to have an affinity for soiled cat litter, as it sticks to everything, especially the rake, making a mess. Remember the idea is that you don't have to deal with handling cat litter directly anymore, right?

I am now on the 2nd Cat Tent as the cat jumped on it one time and the first one broke and I had to use duck tape to fix it. THis new cat tent is better but is very weak for the price u pay for the plastic and plastic materal that is the tent.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R273DEU4GH0VUT

Now we're cleaning the litter box more than ever! We groan with despair when we know we have to go up to see the condition that it's in. To look and see poo stuck to the rake along with clumps of other stuff. Not to mention the loose litter all over the edges of the box and on the floor outside the box. We bought the crappy tent that goes with it but that tore during assembly and now there's loose litter on the bottom of the tent. The entire area must be vacuumed every other day. If you don't mind your cats stepping in clumps of broken up pee, then this product is for you!
http://www.amazon.com/review/RG26YYDGW49XF

The motor was SO noisy that we could hear it go on when we were all the way upstairs, the noise scared our new kitten so much, he refused to use it. Our most mischievious little feline devil discovered what he needed to do to turn the motor on and that became his favorite sport, he'd activate it and watch the rake go back and forth, so the lifespan of the batteries was about 3 days in our house. Our older cat, who's very fastidious, even for a cat, steadfastly refused to use it at all because it smelled. He'd simply go to the spot where the old box used to be and wail. I should point out that the smell was distributed throughout our home when the box was raking. We needed to replace the motor after only 3 weeks because the casing broke, its a complicated process that takes more time than it should since you're presummed to be without a litterbox when it occurs. Cleaning it was a bigger chore than a regular litterbox and took over half hour because you had to dismantle parts of it to clean it completely. The motor couldn't be submerged in water, so taking it to the backyard and hosing it down like I did my regular box wasn't an option, it was scrape, scrub, scrap, scrub, scrape, scrub, etc every 2 or 3 days. It was a disgusting and smelly job, and you'd end up with flecks of litter all over your shirt and FACE. My husband and I would actually argue about who got to clean the mess. Many times the rake would just scoop whatever litter wasn't stuck to the sides and head onto the floor, but since we had the tent, it was scooped inside the tent, so on a daily basis, that had to be dismantled and swept out, because if we didn't, one of the cats would squeeze between the box and tent to use the litter that was deposited there.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R17DPF4GT7G9IB

Everything about cleaning this unit causes you to have to get cat waste all over yourself.
http://www.amazon.com/review/RR9GJ4SFBD7LD

First off it scared my cats to death. One of them refused to use the litter box ever again, even after switching back to a conventional scoop one. Next, the litterbox would literally fling poo. I would give it 5 stars if we were rating it on range!
http://www.amazon.com/review/RXMX22WIAQ0OS

The machine only lets you put in a shallow amount of litter or it will clog as the tines rake through it. This means you have to really watch the litter level. If it is too high the machine jams and the motor runs back and forth over and over again trying to push against a pile of litter. The trouble is, with such a shallow amount of litter [1] if your cat is in the habit of using the same place in the box everytime the litter gets REALLY shallow, and [2] even with a full load of litter, the litter does not clump when your cat has a large pee. The pee soaks to the bottom and sticks, and the litter stays slightly gummy, and sticks to the tines of the rake, and the machine jams. Yes I used premium litter. To make matters worse, my cat liked to pee right on the edge of the litter by the tines where the floor of the box ramps up and there is nearly no litter. instant mess.

If your cat's stool is soft that day, and/or your cat does not properly cover it, the poo smears and sticks all over the rake and it jams. And it is horrible to clean. I have has cat feces jammed way up under the tines on the side where the motor is.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1U8PN3YPPD1I7

It is as if Littermaid tried to design a product to expose you to as much used cat litter as possible.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2XEVH732T9MBI

the rake has just recently adopted a new trick - CATAPAULTING large clumps of poop across the kitchen floor! It's amazing how far those clumps can fly. When I was making a sandwich just now I found some small litter clumps that had landed on the kitchen counter.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R38J95MCLK7MRX

Really look at the picture and think how you would like to clean poop from between all those tines on the rake.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2G6E7Y32MMI09

I hate this product.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1XYLXKZMYG0EG

My wife and I received one of these as a gift and were initially very excited. The excitement, however, wore off when the cat stopped using the box and instead used the basement floor directly in front of the box.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2LADMJG3SPAB3

LitterMaid LM900 Mega Self-Cleaning Litter Box

Mine was quite entertaining when I first purchased it because it came with a unique, added bonus feature. Every time the rake would get up to the disposal container, it would hang up and then forcefully catapult it's precious cargo across the room. I would be sitting there watching turd showers as they fell like meteors after being flung from inside my closet.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1VQSBUHBG90R1

This thing is, no pun intended, a total piece of crap.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1YCHB6QPNQTM4

My cats don't like the noise it makes, and I think they've gotten scared of it, since one of them has started to poop just outside of the box, and the other one started to pee on the bathroom rug (he's 5 years old, and has never had a problem before)
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1WMGVRKP9606C

I have admit this is a great idea, again underline/capitalize the word IDEA.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R5QXWGPTT6T9C

Well... these are made for cats to use, are they not?
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2MZ8JGXT24V3S

My cat, who also enjoys just setting off the sensor so that the rake will pass through the litter, has learned that a great way to get me out of the bed in the middle of the night is to build up a little mountain of litter so that when the rake passes through it and attempts to return to its start position it cannot and the machine will continue to run back and forth, making a sound very similar to nails on a chalk board, until someone (me) evens out the litter.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1Q2VVAGT9RXFL

I read several reviews before buying this product. They seemes very mixed, but I hate changing the litter box, and I thought, "Hey, that person who talks about the cat poop flying 10 feet in the air has GOT to be lying!" Well, sir, that person was not. I, too, have seen the flying cat poop. In fact, the day some hit me in the face was the day I decided to return this!
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DCOIY61ZEUYJ

Countless times I have been awaken at midnight by the loud whine of this contraption struggling to empty the contents until it finally stops after four or five rounds of noise unable to achieve its goal
http://www.amazon.com/review/RHLJPF2X8D8L2

I don't know what kind of toxoplasmosis you can get when it flings a chunk of cat litter in your eye, but I'll know soon.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2V1504T3TL2AW/

I have had for about 5 months now, and this morning at 4am, it broke. The whole arm with the rake and the motor broke clean off, and I can see no way to repair it. However, after it broke, the motor continued to run and run until I got up and turned it off...I am surprised after reading all of the bad reviews that LitterMaid has not improved their product. I am also surprised they are even still in business.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3D4ERTMRQGMJ3

What you have to understand is that the rake mechanism that sweeps up the clumps of litter runs along a line of sprocket-like plastic ridges...ridges that get jammed with litter every time it operates.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R35VS2YQBIDVL4

is lovely if the waste isn't in any way still damp but if it is watch out! With the rake-like feature it dug through the waste and stuck in the scooper all the time. Then it would reverse and push the unscooped waste into the mechanisim and it was just gross!
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3CQ9CIJMKQ8FM

The Incubus, or, How a Litterbox Ruined My Life
This is possibly the worst product ever fashioned by human hands. When it does work, which is rarer than the appearance of most astronomical phenomenon, all the tines of the rake serve to do is spear chunks of cat feces and carry them back to the return position, leaving nothing in the waste receptacle. Spending just five minutes scraping it off is enough to make me want to stab myself with one of said tines, that I might become infected with a deadly strain of ecoli, and be permanently freed from this abortion of a product.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1RH4CFWDOEEJJ

I have asked the Litter Box God to please tell me the "Littermaid secret". I give up. The secret is apparently I AM THE LITTERMAID!...I really regret not asking for a new poop shovel and taken the $100 and my cats could be pooping in gold dust. Wow. I did not know I was that mad. Sorry.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2EG7PNR8NRO1L

I have spent more money on litter boxes than clothes.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JA3CUQIM0BEV

Louder. Louder Than Hell. My wife and I bought one of these infernal machines and next to nails on a chalkboard and Ashley Simpson, the shrieking that comes from the slow-dying motor is absolutely one of the worst noises I can think of. I have been woken from a dead sleep many nights to the tune of "clogged feces." If you haven't heard this tune, let me describe it for you. Combine a five year old playing the electric violin for the first time with Fran Drescher and add in a few seconds of dead silence in two or three 15 second intervals.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2EZQII0XE14CZ