I'm at war with robots!
The Roomba keeps saying that its brushes need clearing and stopping, despite having been cleared. It's a "smart feature" that wasn't in older Roombas.
Our old Litter-Robot (the Litter-Robot II, which we had from 2014 to 2019) was good, but the Litter-Robot 3 we got in 2019 has constantly had problems, so we switched to a normal litter box, but kept the litter robot around as a supplement in the basement.
The Litter-Robot II had a step-on switch that started a timer to scoop the litter after a cat stepped on the entrance step and went in. It eventually broke but was very reliable.
The Litter-Robot 3 has a "cat sensor" that is so sensitive that it gets triggered by the litter robot itself when it is rotating its orb to scoop the litter. And so, it stopped in mid-rotation all the time, and I'd have to reset it.
A couple weeks ago, it stopped and would not go back to its normal position via resetting.
So, I contacted tech support via the chat widget on their site. I thought it would be quick, but I think they have the workers responding to multiple chats simultaneously. Every time I typed something, it took at least two minutes for a response.
In addition to that, they made me do stuff I already said I tried up front (per their script, probably), but I guess I have come to expect that from tech support these days.
In the end, the support worker concluded we had a faulty cat sensor and would give me one for 10% off. I said no, I will never give money to the Whisker company at this point. A few responses later (which took around ten minutes), they said they'd send it for free. How kind.
I was going to chuck the litter robot, but lately, Bonus Cat has been pissing in the tub. Why? It is a elder cat mystery, but one possibility is that he will no longer accept a non-pristine litter box, which would mean we'd have to scoop constantly. That's the one thing the old (Litter-Robot II) did, and so I am fighting technology for a chance at that happening again.
Similarly, the reason I am bothering to try to get past this Roomba nonsense instead of trashing it is that, while we have a small house and can vacuum it a couple of times a week manually, because of the cats, a daily vacuuming is really helpful.
So, in a way, I'm actually in a proxy war with cats.