Bissell SpotBot: Worth every penny.

When my husband and I moved into our first house two years ago, there was nary a speck of carpet in sight. Just hardwood floors and linoleum.

Sometime during our first year in our house, I made the grave mistake of wanting carpet in our bedroom. I missed feeling the soft plushiness under foot when rising every morning. The hardwood floors just seemed so...hard.

Carpet would be an easy answer except we have four (albeit small) dogs. I went ahead with my plans to have carpet installed in the bedrooms anyway. Nice creamy white shaggy carpet.

In less than two weeks we had an accident waiting to be cleaned up on our newly installed carpet with my husband standing behind me saying, "I told you so."

I grabbed my old stand-by, Nature's Miracle, and went at the stain. When the carpet was wet, it appeared as though I had got it. However, as it dried, I noticed that the small pet stain was now replaced by a bigger yellowish bleachy stain. Egads!

I treated the new large stain with water. No help. I attacked it with white vinegar. Again, it was still there. I borrowed my mom's carpet cleaner. Little improvement, but it was still obviously there.

Just when I was at my wit's end, I discovered the Bissell SpotBot.


What Bissell claims:

• Revolutionary spot cleaner gives you the freedom to walk away while it does the work for you
• Enjoy hands-free cleaning; set SpotBot on the stain, hit start and walk away
• Convenient hose and tools with on-board storage for versatile cleaning of stairs, auto and upholstery
• Pre-programmed cycles for surface or set-in stains
• Unique spiral brushing system safely and effectively brushes, sprays and permanently removes stains such as red wine, cola, fruit juice and coffee

{courtesy of www.target.com}


What I found:

When I began researching the SpotBot, I was immediately put off by the price, which averages at about $130. However, after reading countless reviews, I was convinced it was worth it and began saving.

My mother-in-law let me on to a little secret: Buy it at Linens and Things where you can use one of their 20% off coupons that often come in their ads.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a current ad. I went online and did a search for Linens and Things coupons. I found a 20% off coupon for online purchases. I found the SpotBot at www.linensandthings.com, entered the coupon code in, and then selected "store pick-up". I was able to pick up my SpotBot within hours from my local Linens and Things and only paid $110 (with tax).


Features:

At first I was kind of alarmed at the size of the SpotBot. It looked a lot bigger in person than it did online. I would describe it as being about as big as a backpack (sorry, it's an early morning and I'm trying to wrack my brain!). It's not as heavy as one would think for being it's size and is pretty easy to carry around thanks to it's ergonomic design. (Not that you'll be carrying it around much anyway, which is the charm of the product!).

The SpotBot came fully assembled. All I had to do was lift it out of the box.

It's light green/metallic in color. It features a tank on each end, one for clean water/formula and the other for dirty water.

The tanks are very easy to remove- you literally just lift them out. the clean water/formula tank features a screw cap that you remove to add water/formula. The dirty water tank lifts out and features an opening on top to pour everything out.

On the bottom of the SpotBot are where the spiral brushes are held. They're the ones that do all the automatic cleaning.

The SpotBot also has a hose that wraps around it's body, which provides two functions. The main function is to provide suction for the dirty water/formula the SpotBot picks up. It also unwraps and has a small attachable brush (which is stored on the bottom part of the SpotBot) that allows you to use the SpotBot for manual cleaning.

During manual cleaning, the hose also has a small trigger-spray for clean formula to come out.

The SpotBot features a control panel on top that is very easy and simple to follow. One button is for "Surface Stains", which features about a three minute cleaning cycle. The next button is for "Set-In Stains" which features about a six minute cycle. Next to that button is a button for "Manual", which turns on the hose/trigger setting.

Below the three buttons are two more buttons. One is "Pause/Resume" and the other is "Stop".

Next to all of the buttons, along the right-hand side, is a series of status-indicator lights that let you know what status the SpotBot is in.


Using the SpotBot.

It was about five minutes from me taking the SpotBot out of the box to setting it up to work at it's first stain, and most of that time involved me trying to get the awkward styrofoam packaging off.

The SpotBot comes with two trials of cleaner, one normal and one OxyCleaner. The OxyCleaner is to be used in conjunction with the normal cleaner (and water) to provide a booster for set-in stains. This is the setup I used.

I placed the SpotBot over one of my bleachy stains, plugged it in, pressed "Set-in Stain" and let it work it's magic (as I walked away). Six minutes later it began beeping to let me know that it was done.

I removed the SpotBot and found a circular spot about the length of a pencil in diameter. It was still damp, but not nearly as damp as what my mom's carpet cleaning machine leaves the carpet.

About two hours later the spot was completely dry and...

MY BLEACHY STAIN WAS GONE!

I couldn't believe my eyes. I had to call in my husband for confirmation.


Since then, I've used the SpotBot for several other areas on our carpet. I've found the one tank of solution lasts through about three cycles of the "Set-In Stain" program. I've used the "Surface Stain" program once and wasn't as happy with the results.

Another thing I've found that helps speed the drying process is to use the manual setting to suck up the remaining moisture in the carpet.

I've also used the manual setting to clean the upholstery/mats in my car. It worked WONDERS on my mats, I was astounded by how easy it was. I only have one complaint about cleaning the upholstery. I feel like the manual brush/trigger spray covers an area too large so it was difficult to spray the sides of the car seat without spraying the dash and everything else. However, I'm sure that if the diameter was made any smaller it wouldn't be right for manual carpet cleaning. It would be nice if Bissell offered an additional attachment with a smaller nozzle specifically for upholstery cleaning.

One other thing I've found is that the Bissell Pet Stain and Odor remover formula will leave yellow bleachy stains just like Nature's Miracle, even when using the SpotBot. From now on I just use the regular formula.

In Conclusion:

The SpotBot is a versatile machine worth every penny. I wanted to tuck it into bed with me last night but my husband refused. :(