First, I ask that you post your info in the
Survey thread.
Second, I also feel it is hard to believe that if there are so few problem bots, why would KA spend the $$ during warranty and then watch the bots go up in flames out of warranty and not just replace the bot up front and be done with it? My opinion, all the bots are built the same. All have the same failure rates.
If there is any reseller that isn't being contacted by their customers, it is going to be because of two reasons.
1) they haven't had the bot running enough to hit that magic "hours used" number for the bot to start falling apart
2) they are going directly to KA with their problems. And, from my understanding, if I contact my reseller once.. and they tell me to call KA, why would I call my reseller again in two months when another motor fails? In other words, the resellers are not going to see the full picture on product failures.
Now, to answer the actual question, what do I feel will be my maintenance costs to keep the bot running? Well, from what I can tell, they want you to spend $800/yr for the "upgrade" if they make it available regularly. But, realistically, I could see you spending around $100 per year for replacement blades.. but that may go down after the first few years as you have enough extras to straiten and sharpen them as needed. Then, if you take a three year period, where I would be willing to bet that you will need to replace both wheel motors and the blade motor, so that's $1,000 total, divided by three years, so around $333/yr at that point + any additional blades. Now, if you are lucky, you can extend the blade motor for another year or so for only $50, but that is only if they are willing to sell you the part, and you have the ability to tear down and rebuild a motor. By now, you are toward your fifth year, which sounds like you will need to replace the battery, which is an additional $325 for that year and if you are lucky, you won't need to replace motors for another three years..
So, using a 10 year window and only 1 blade purchase per year, I see the maintenance cost of keeping these things working to be:
2 x batteries = $650
8 x wheel motors = $2,400
3 x blade motors = $1,200
Total = $4,250 / 10 = $425 / year
And that is if nothing else breaks, like a wheel, or caster wheel, or rear panel, or bump sensor, or motherboard, or PS/Charger, or transmitter, or inline filter, etc.
I'd say that is a minimum repair cost and we'd be lucky if it was just those I listed. When you see it like that, the $800 competition sure does start to look better.. Just toss it out every two years and your saving $50 and getting a whole new bot. Who knows, they might even last longer than two years!
