Customer Ratings & Reviews

iRobot Roomba S9+ Injured My Back Causing Damage to My Sciatic Nerve After Roomba S9+ mapped my house during jobs it started to stop frequently in the middle of the room where there were no obstacles. It would give an error message. In order to refresh it to start working again I would have to bend down and lift it up a few inches then put it back down. For one job in a 400 sq ft space it would stop many times while every time bending down and lifting it then putting it back down to restart. I purchased the Roomba S9+ in late November 2020 during the sales at Best Buy. During early January on a occasion bending down and lifting it up to restart it, as I was bending I immediately felt a sharp pain on my lower center back. Then I stood up and my back experienced a very sharp bad pain. I couldn't hardly walk. My roommate helped me to my bedroom. The pain became progressively worse all throughout the day. I was bed bound for 3 days, and couldn't change positions in my bed. After 3 days I was able to get out of bed. My mom gave me her extra cane and grabbing stick to help me walk and lift lightweight objects. My back was very sore for 3 weeks. During those 3 weeks my back was too sore to walk to my mailbox that was at the end of the street of my cul-de-sac about 600 feet away. After 4 weeks my back started feeling like normal and I could lift light weight sized objects again. Then after my back was feeling better shortly later my right leg developed numbness and tingling. It progressively became worse and the numbness turned into a hard pain like the feeling of a concrete brick hit me from inside my bone. It was a scary feeling. The pain would go away only when I sat down. Then after 10 minutes standing up the pain started again. When I went grocery shopping I had to drive the electric cart, I couldn't walk through the aisles. I'm a college math instructor and after standing at the chalk board for 5 to 10 minutes I had to sit down and ask students to write on the chalk board for me. Every day it progressively became worse and by the week of March 15th 2021 it developed to the point the pain did not go away when I sat down and it was also very painful in bed, So painful I couldn’t sleep. By Friday March 19, 2021, the pain spread all throughout the right side of my body from my feet and ankle, all throughout my leg calf and thigh and the right side of my private area and my right abdomen into my right arm. The pain at this point was more excruciating than any pain I ever felt. At this point I couldn't even drive, I had no control of my feet for the pedals. My aunt found an excellent doctor specializing in nerve damage and on March 23, 2021 I was given a steroid treatment and now 5 days later I'm out of the immense crippling pain and I have some mobility back. Though, I am still in pain when I walk and it hurts when I attempt to hold common kitchen counter items like a gallon jug of water. But thank goodness it’s not that paralyzing pain causing me not to move at all. Before S9+ injured me, I was in good shape. Now I can’t do the things I normally do. It’s been emotionally frustrating to say the least. Before the injury I was a very active person. And I’m into organic, healthy environmentally conscientiously living. I’m into making organic raw fresh vegetable and fruit juices regularly, now even after my treatment, it hurts to attempt to prepare my juicing and I can’t do it. I’m craving for a glass of fresh pressed juice right now this very minute and I feel horrible I can’t make it. Same for cooking. And it hurts to load dishes in my dishwasher. And it’s been very emotionally challenging to cope with the changes now in my lifestyle. I’m not getting any exercise now because I can’t move around without still being in pain. I have the piece of furniture that I now just have to spend my days sitting because I found a position that doesn’t hurt me. As I said thankfully I can at least walk enough to shower and go to the bathroom. And I was able to drive to my mother’s house for holiday religious dinner last night. Now that spring is here I was looking forward to working on my deck projects, I am very sad I won’t be able to do it now. I’m praying that future medical treatment will eventually get rid of the problem. I know I can’t keep getting steroid treatments just to relieve the pain. I will have to see specialists to try to get to the root of the problem. My doctor prescribed physical therapy I will be starting soon. This is now also affected my job. I can’t get the work done I usually do. My job position is called adjunct mathematics instructor. I work part time between 5 colleges and universities. One of the universities I work for is on campus, not remote. Thank goodness my employer allows me to teach the class remotely while I’m not well to come in because I had to take a week off from work. I don’t know now If I’m ready to go back on campus. Unfortunately because I am part time, I have no job security. My teaching contracts are only by the semester. I can always be let go at will and I’m afraid to think how long my employers will tolerate me. The other colleges and universities I work for teaching remotely due to the COVID my work fell behind when I was in that crippled pain and I’m still falling behind during my recovery. Not only is the injury affecting my overall lifestyle It has also put my 18 year career and my PhD program at risk. I am five years into a PhD program writing my dissertation in the last year and this is also brought that very behind. I'm very disappointed with iRobot. I emailed them what happened to me in January, they said a supervisor will call back and never did. I called back a couple weeks ago and they said they would forward request to Escalation department and I was still waiting. I also left messages on their corporate number voice-mail. Wow, I guess the company was too busy to care. A funny story, the most recent customer representative said you must have had a defective one and exchange it for another. I already did that on Jan 16th and I'm afraid to use it again. I never opened the box and now it is past return time. I'm not going to bend down one more time for that robot. No where in the user manual does it say “warning: this machine requires bending for general maintenance.” I have a Black Belt in 6-Sigma quality engineering and I am qualified to say, besides the defectiveness of my Roomba S9+, the design of the machine does require routine bending. For instance, routine cleaning of the machine, one has to bend down to lift it off the docking station to clean it then bend down to put it back. If an object gets caught in between the brushes one has to bend. With an upright vacuum to clean or maintenance it I just have to turn it upside down, requires no bending. In general, any maintenance of S9+ requires bending. Just after a couple days after I bought it I realized that they should have made a ramp for it so bending would not be required for general maintenance. There is a flaw in the mapping system design such that S9+ does not vacuum on the rooms' borderline. Then it does require bending to position the robot to vacuum there. Spot mode is controlled by a button on the machine which requires bending. I inquired about this to customer service and they said the previous app controlled spotting and the new version of the app a room can be made to where to spot. The problems with that are the app does not make small rooms the size of the area covered by the spotting motion, and a 2 run pass is not as concentrating as a spotting run and will not path along the rooms border if that is an area that needs cleaning. OMG, to be satirical, I’m wondering if they will publish my review on their website due to the fact that it has to be approved. Will iRobot be objective and want the public to know the downside of their product? Just in case they don't, I think it’s only fair to let the public know the risks of owning S9+ and the experiences I went through. I’m hoping you think what happened to me is news of interest. Robotics is trending. Home appliance robotic manufacturers promote these robots as making life easier but do not describe the downside of maintaining them. Just as industrial robots require new jobs to maintain and deal with their problems, for household appliance robots that job falls on the household consumer. Here is an anecdote. I was telling the story to my class on Zoom and a student said their household has one. I asked if her household experienced anything I experienced and she said that rarely use it. That’s because it is time consuming and takes extra work to use. Just like with juicing, my friends who own juicers rarely use it because it is time consuming and takes extra work to use.

If you want something cool to show your friends then get this . If you want something that is consistent and YOU DONT need to babysit then this aint it it. This is my 3rd one due to the fact i had to exchange multiple times because of consistent errors. Similar issues with m6 wetmop. I literally have to be home to save it from some type of error. My iRoboti vacum is repeatedly saying to charge it now as I write this and won’t stop even though its fully charged and haven’t used it for days. Simply not worth tge big price tag for for any of these.

Too noisy. It vacuumed all my dog hair but it’s too noisy and but things I have to buy bags.

Doesn’t have the memory or programming to do what it says it will do. Constant reset to factory settings required. Can’t remember how to find its home at least every other day. You spend a fortune replacing its fragile rubber roller brushes every month at least. Worst purchase I have ever made and weve had it a year. I regret buying it at least daily.

Leaves my tiles sparcklin clean and the floor is dirt and dust free. I would recomend it to anyone with a big home. Thats not full of clutter.

It is good and I will refer to friends. Thanks I will come back

Very good supplies. I am grateful use it. It's a good assistant at home

Does a great job easy to use love having a clean home

When it works, it collects a surprising amount of dust and detritus. However, after a week of ownership, it's going back. Note. When you buy this bundle you need to return everything included in the bundle. That goes for folks that purchased the 4 year extension. SUPER lame here as it initially performed great. Combined with this sleeker design, it would have been a house favorite.

Not a small purchase but a great buy - worth every penny.

Well I tried two weeks and really decided to return my combo I robot plus brava jet, both have a hard time doing the job, I try and try, and finally support tell me to disconnect my wifi devices like tv or laptop or thermostats or security cameras, etc is unacceptable

I purchased my s9+ combo and a year and half later it stopped cleaning and would just bump into something and say it was stuck. I reached out for support. Willing to pay for a repair and when I finally got a response I was told the issue was with my roomba and to purchase another one with a laughable 10% discount. They didnt tell me what was actually wrong just that it was broken and wouldn’t let me know how to fix it

Increbily frustrating set of devices. The mop fails to spray at 2 years and the vacuum is far from intelligent, constantly needs attention, has numerous issues, is quite noisy, and is more hassle than of benefit. If done estensive troubleshooting - im finsihed with the pair and both are going in the recycle bin.

The worst piece of junk I've ever paid over 1K for. I totally regret buying it, and worse than that, not returning it. I also have the 980 and it always worked great. This thing would never even get off the dock. Hate it. Avoid

Good good good good good Good good good good good