Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I fell in love with this massage unit from the moment I switched it on. On the positive side, it feels WONDERFUL! It was worth every penny of the rather steep sales price. After just 10 days of use it began making a terribly loud rattle or buzz. One moment it was purring like a kitten, the next it sounded like a wounded chainsaw. It was not difficult to isolate the area the buzz came from, and it was also a simple matter to squelch the rattle by pressing on the massage surface about 3 inches below the massage bar and 2 inches in from the left edge of the massage surface. If you pushed hard enough, the buzz/rattle was subdued. The higher the speed setting used, the harder you had to push to get the rattle quiet. On the highest speed settings, the pressure required to silence the beast was substantial, and made it impossible to relax and enjoy the massage. I also own the Medi-Massage body massager, and it has never had so much as a sniffle, so I figured this foot massager was likely just an isolated, defective machine. I returned it to Amazon and ordered a replacement. One thing jumped out at me right away when I turned on the replacement machine. There was a clear, distinct difference in the intensity of the massage it delivered. It did not even approach the intensity of the defective machine it had replaced. However, it was still very nice, so I decided to keep it anyway. The first unit lasted about 10 days. The replacement lasted only 8 days before developing the identical buzz/rattle. Like the first massager, the replacement was purring along just fine one moment, then morphed into the chainsaw without warning the next. After examining it carefully I found the buzz emanating from the same area as on the first machine, and could press in about the same spot to silence it with increasing pressure required to calm the buzz as higher massage speeds were used. In retrospect, I wonder now if the distinct difference in the intensity of massage between the first and second unit might perhaps be an indication of sloppy and/or inconsistent manufacturing practices, or perhaps it is indicative of bad design. It's always possible Amazon just picked up a bad batch of machines, but it is equally possible this is just poor engineering design. Either way, for $230 I rather expect a device to be trouble-free for a bit longer than one week. Machine #2 is going back. There will be no more Medi-Massager replacements. Two defective units is three too many. I'll be opting instead for the Thumper Versa Pro. I've had two other Thumper massagers for several years with nary an issue with either of them. I'm going to give their foot massager a try and swear off the Medi-Massagers.