Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsWas doing good until I noticed a freaking crack in it
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2024
I bought this in January 2024 (so almost 2 months ago at the time of writing this). I wanted to stop drinking from plastic bottles. I settled for this one because I wanted something inexpensive but with good reviews until I could afford to get water filtering put in the sink where I live. I live in the Southeastern US and the tap water tastes like metal pool water. You can smell it. I was shocked at how good the filtered water is. I was fully prepared to return this and didn't expect it to be able to make our gross water tolerable, but I was amazed that it does! I don't know if it took some getting used to, or if the pitcher needed more times than the instructions say to run water through it before it's good to go, but by this afternoon I was fully drinking only this for water and enjoying the extra money in my pocket no longer being spent on packs of plastic bottles.
This afternoon as I was going to fill it back up, I noticed that the pitcher is cracked. I don't throw this thing around and I treat it with care. I put some of that tape on it that's made for leaks for now and I have emailed Brita for support, as I am now currently outside of my return window through Amazon. I will update my review once I hear back from Brita and see what they have to offer for a resolution. At this point, I am pretty frustrated that this is happening so soon after buying it, but hopefully Brita support will come through for me.
Edit (3 weeks later): Contacting Brita support went well, but it was annoying to deal with their forms with the information for my pitcher with the little information you get from the Amazon order. Their forms to get the process going are not Amazon order friendly. The names of the pitchers on their side are not the same as what it says here, so it took me 20 minutes to figure out and hope that I was telling them the right model that was in question for the warranty.
They offered to ship me a replacement straight out. They said the replacement would fulfill the warranty, and any further issues with the replacement pitcher would not also be guaranteed to be covered. I haven't dealt with warrantys much before, but that didn't exactly make me feel good to read given that my first pitcher from them only made it 3 months. That being said, they did say that if anything happens to the replacement that I could reach out to them all the same.
So they told me to wait up to 14 business days for the replacement. Today was about that much time. I emailed to ask for a status update, since tracking was not provided for the replacement. The way their reply was worded was a little confusing, but I get the impression that they may have or may not have attempted to send the replacement; the replacement pitcher model is now apparently out of stock (even though it is apparently quite purchaseable from Amazon as I type this); and now I will be sent a refund check (hopefully). If I do or do not manage to get that, I will edit this again to update. Regardless of the outcome, I'm leaning towards never buying a Brita pitcher again if I can stand it probably.
Edit 2: It has been 7 business days since I was told I would receive a refund check by mail. There is no tracking available on this. I will reach out if I don't receive it within the 14 business days. As I type this, the same pitcher is still readily available to order through Amazon. I ended up finding out that while I was waiting 14 business days for my replacement pitcher to arrive originally, that apparently the fulfillment center cancelled the request for the pitcher to be sent to me all together because they claimed it was out of stock, and I received no notification of this (nor did they notify the agent who I had been working with, I think; or if they did, they didn't notify me either). The professionalism of the person I corresponded with at Brita seems to have been top notch and they claimed that they would be sharing details of this experience with their team. No amount of professionalism can make up for how bizarre this whole situation is though. I will update when I do or not get the check.