K-TEC Champ HP3

I have used my blender once or twice a day for the past 2 1/2 years. The blender is capable of making frozen smoothies with an excellent, smooth texture. When making EXTREMELY thick frozen smoothies the blender does have a tendency to spin so fast that the ingredients get suspended above the blades due to the powerful vortex. There is no plunger to push the ingredients back down into the spinning blades so I am forced to physically pound on the side of the jar, shake the machine while it is running or turn it off and knock the ingredients back down. This inconvenience sometimes forces me to run the blender 3-6 times to get the perfect smoothie texture. The constant running of the blender with extremely thick ingredients has caused it to overheat many times (a safety mechanism automatically turns the blender off to prevent the motor from burning up when it gets too hot). I have talked to the technicians at K-TEC about this and they said it shouldn't happen and that they use their blenders 500-1000 times a day during demonstrations. I have seen their demonstrations and noticed that the smoothies they make are not as thick or as smooth as the smoothies I make. This would explain why their blenders don't overheat. The machine is extremely noisy when crushing ice due to its horsepower. Although I may have many critical comments in regards to the K-TEC blender, I would buy another one. I have burned up several non-commercial strength blenders in the past. The only other blender that I have seen work as well is the Vita Mix (my parents own one).