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(More customer reviews)Amazon sells this crock pot through Target/ITC. I bought it at a local Target store for the same price.
Didn't want to pay a lot for a crock pot because we'll use it infrequently. Wife says Rival is best. I went with the wife's recommendation.
When I got home, I was sad to see that Rival is part of "The Holmes Group." I've sworn off Holmes' products because of their ventilation fans whereby they charge you money to get a warranty replacement and it's rigged so the charge plus shipping is the same amount as a new fan. Essentially, this means, their warranty is not only worthless but it is a scam.
I don't know if warranty will be handled in a similarly dismal fashion should we have problems with this Rival crock pot. Nevertheless, wife wants a basic Rival crock pot so I'll give in and accept a "Holmes" product this one time for her sake.
We've used it only once so far. I will say the lid fits tightly and doesn't have a gasket because it doesn't seem to need one. I had a 4 pound roast + 1.5 quarts of liquids in the thing and over a 10 hour cook cycle, the liquid level only dropped about 1/8 of an inch. I think it's important that a crock pot hold moisture in. This one seems to do it well.
Cooking on low for 10 hours, the liquids just barely bubbled slightly as the food barely simmered--just as I expected. So, I'd have to say it seems to maintain temperature accurately.
This crock pot has just a good old reliable off/warm/low/high switch. I avoided Rival's digital models. Some Rival digital models don't allow much actual temperature control--like you can't manually switch from a cook temp to a keep warm temp. It's all forced upon you when you choose a cooking time. Rival has another digital model called the "countdown timer" and this seemed like a good thing until I asked about what happens during a power outage. Know what happens? It shuts down. So, with Rival's digital models, if your power blips off for a few seconds while you're gone for the day, you might come home to rotten uncooked food. Here at our house, we have such power blips about 10 to 15 times per year. I have a bread maker that I use frequently. It has no provision to cope with power outages. If the power blips off a few seconds, the cycle stops and the bread is ruined. There's no way to set it so that it restarts where it left off. It has to restart from the beginning. I have sworn I won't get another digital cooking appliance that is going to go dead due to a momentary power outage. So, this basic crock pot with its good old standard rotary off/warm/low/high switch is totally immune to power blips. It will just go back to work when the power comes back on.
I heard a "crack" sound after about 4 hours. I was afraid I suffered ceramic crock damage as many people seem to complain about. Most cracks seem to be in the Kitchen Aid and Hamilton Beach product reviews. Nevertheless, I thought I was a victim. It was a loud crack sound. Really was. But, I've examined the crockery insert (liner) and it seems to be unharmed. Don't know what the noise was. Maybe there's a practically invisible hariline crack that will become more readily apparent later on. I'll watch closely and post back if that's the case. Maybe the cracking sound only indicated the relief of some benign stressors inherent in the stamped metal housing?
Like I say, I'll post if there's a crock defect that shows up later on. The crockery liner is so heavy, it would cost a lot to ship it back to Rival if they demanded such in a warranty claim. It's so heavy, I'll bet it would cost at least 3/4 as much as an entirely new crock pot just to ship the broken liner to Rival. Reports are that Kitchen Aid covers the entire cost of replacements for defective crockery liners. I hope Rival will do the same and I hope they don't resort to flim-flam warranty scams like they do with their Holmes ventilation fans.
So, this model is a basic crock pot with a basic switch and I presume it utilizes the basic bi-metal thermostat design that is common in lots of appliances. Therefore, unless the Chinese factories really screwed things up, this Rival crock pot should last as long as those old Rival crock pots that seem to have favorably impressed my wife.
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Crock-Pot SCV553KM 5.5-Quart Oval Manual Slow Cooker With Dipper, White
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