Weber recalling unsold SmokeFire grills to the factory


 
Interesting. Lowe’s appears to be trying to clear out their existing stock. I just picked up a brand new EX6 for $950 that was marked as “clearance”. They tried to give me a poorly assembled floor unit but I asked for a boxed one and got it. Weber agreed to immediately ship me the upgraded auger assembly and pellet slide. I’ll put up with the inconvenience of installing the parts for that discount.
This is great for you but you have to wonder did Lowe's just figure they had enough, get rid of what they had and be done with them. As Chris said whatever inventory the dealers had were going back to Weber to be returned at some point is Weber refunding to the dealers what they paid for them or are they not going to do that and just replace down the road the same inventory. I would think not you laid out the money to Weber so you tied up dollars with no idea when you get that inventory back and of course winter is coming not exactly prime season.

We will never know what Lowe's paid for those EX6's maybe the $950 was their cost so they don't lose anything kind of and a lot easier to just blow them out than return them. When I say they did not lose anything those who have been in retail and I was many years ago you actually lost money you tied up inventory and floor space made nothing in return. How many of these things were returned which again costs you money even if Weber has to give them full credit which I suspect with a chain like that its a given but you still have to burn customer service time, tie up space in your warehouse obviously put them on a pallet or something so they can be picked up which results in labor costs not to mention customers who aren't happy and to expect them as others have said and we are a different breed here to call Weber and ask for the latest updates and install them I am a big DIY guy but most people would say are you kidding me and just return it.
 
I’m always a slow adopter of new technology. Having said that my old kettle is starting to show its age. i’ve been looking at these pellet poopers as a replacement. Maybe when the 2.0 comes out I’ll take another look.
 
Wow!! That sounds like an expensive proposition! I wonder if this is dealer driven. You would think that Weber could just ship replacement parts to owners when they register their SmokeFire from an authorized dealer just based on the serial number.
Expensive yes but I suspect the Lawyers finally stepped in. Your liability to expect a consumer to properly install all these parts correctly is begging for a lawsuit if something goes wrong. In the automotive world and of course this is not if you recall something you go to a dealer to make those fixes and of course the dealer gets paid to do that by the manufacturer. The Weber dealers are not qualified to do something like this obviously it would take training nor would they be interested in doing something like that since they don't wan't any responsibility if something goes wrong either not enough money in it.

To dispatch Weber technicians to make the fixes on site would cost a fortune nor would they probably have coverage to cover the country so better to bring them all back in house and do it there.

Edit: My guess is they lost their butts on these and I think it was Jon maybe wrong said they were rushing it to market many months ago for the spring season whoever said it was correct. Really it's a shame but you have to wonder who is in charge of product development, testing to make sure the product was ready for market. It's impossible to me that they were not aware of some of these problems before they released it but once they got it out there in volume the problems just got worse.
 
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I wonder too if Weber saw all the discounting going on due to the not so good roll out and simply decided to pull it from the market to maintain their price integrity. They have always been a "no discount" company and I am sure it pained them deeply to see the deep discounts happening on their newest baby
 
I have a Smokefire ex4 I waited to pull the trigger, I don’t think the software is the best. The internal thermocouple has way to much exponential filtering. I understand why they would do that. For me the Smokefire ex4 has worked flawlessly. Only problem I have had is a fuse blew on it. The mechanicals of the grill seem solid. The auger problems they have is not the auger. It’s how it tries to pull back the pellets into the hopper. I don’t understand that choice, many pellet grills just stop feeding them when you shut it down. Plus Weber has the slide, which allows them to just wait until temp drops in the grill and drop a few pellets off the end. For a pellet grill it does do a great job, makes some excellent food. It is a DC grill, and there are not many pellet grills that have DC augers, fans and igniters. The advantage of DC controls is you can reverse motors, and it is easier to control fan speeds, than AC shaded pole motors. However when you surf the bleeding edge of technology you tend to bleed. Which is what Weber appears to have done. I have not replaced the auger, but I am wondering if I should proactively do that. I bought mine during the fourth of July sale. I wouldn’t pay 999.99 for the grill but I would definitely pay 799.99 all day long and twice on Tuesday. However that is just me. Weber is a hardware company, and when a hardware company gets into the software business there is always pain. Their pellets for this grill are also really good, the competition blend has some of the best tasting, and smelling smoke on the market. It come at a premium price but they are premium pellets.
 
Keep in mind one thing, that with big box stores they don't buy their high priced items, what they do is get the grills for free and pay the Minimal Resale Price, when one is sold or less depending on what contract is negotiated. In the case of recalls, the big box stores are only out the time, it takes to put the pallet of grills on a truck to send it back to the manufacturer. And even in the case of a recall, this is negotiated, so it's probably a lot cheaper for the big box store to send the Weber smoke fires back to weber than face even a hint of a lawsuit. Also, it's in the big box store's best interest to do this so that more units are purchased in the long run.
 
I have a Smokefire ex4 I waited to pull the trigger, I don’t think the software is the best. The internal thermocouple has way to much exponential filtering. I understand why they would do that. For me the Smokefire ex4 has worked flawlessly. Only problem I have had is a fuse blew on it. The mechanicals of the grill seem solid. The auger problems they have is not the auger. It’s how it tries to pull back the pellets into the hopper. I don’t understand that choice, many pellet grills just stop feeding them when you shut it down. Plus Weber has the slide, which allows them to just wait until temp drops in the grill and drop a few pellets off the end. For a pellet grill it does do a great job, makes some excellent food. It is a DC grill, and there are not many pellet grills that have DC augers, fans and igniters. The advantage of DC controls is you can reverse motors, and it is easier to control fan speeds, than AC shaded pole motors. However when you surf the bleeding edge of technology you tend to bleed. Which is what Weber appears to have done. I have not replaced the auger, but I am wondering if I should proactively do that. I bought mine during the fourth of July sale. I wouldn’t pay 999.99 for the grill but I would definitely pay 799.99 all day long and twice on Tuesday. However that is just me. Weber is a hardware company, and when a hardware company gets into the software business there is always pain. Their pellets for this grill are also really good, the competition blend has some of the best tasting, and smelling smoke on the market. It come at a premium price but they are premium pellets.
Well said, love my SF and those MB pellets are great!
 
I have a Smokefire ex4 I waited to pull the trigger, I don’t think the software is the best. The internal thermocouple has way to much exponential filtering. I understand why they would do that. For me the Smokefire ex4 has worked flawlessly. Only problem I have had is a fuse blew on it. The mechanicals of the grill seem solid. The auger problems they have is not the auger. It’s how it tries to pull back the pellets into the hopper. I don’t understand that choice, many pellet grills just stop feeding them when you shut it down. Plus Weber has the slide, which allows them to just wait until temp drops in the grill and drop a few pellets off the end. For a pellet grill it does do a great job, makes some excellent food. It is a DC grill, and there are not many pellet grills that have DC augers, fans and igniters. The advantage of DC controls is you can reverse motors, and it is easier to control fan speeds, than AC shaded pole motors. However when you surf the bleeding edge of technology you tend to bleed. Which is what Weber appears to have done. I have not replaced the auger, but I am wondering if I should proactively do that. I bought mine during the fourth of July sale. I wouldn’t pay 999.99 for the grill but I would definitely pay 799.99 all day long and twice on Tuesday. However that is just me. Weber is a hardware company, and when a hardware company gets into the software business there is always pain. Their pellets for this grill are also really good, the competition blend has some of the best tasting, and smelling smoke on the market. It come at a premium price but they are premium pellets.

That's an interesting comment on the DC power. I just purchased a Green Mountain Daniel Boone Prime+. It is also DC powered except they provide an external power brick and cable. It give lots of flexibility in running it (car 12v power port, standard car battery) but is rather a pain to deal with a 3-part power supply to get it hooked up.
 

 

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