Customer Service

I purchased my Joule on November 6th of 2015 and waited with great anticipation for its arrival. I waited and waited and waited and waited. Then one day I received an email from Chefsteps confirming my shipping address and shortly after I received an email informing me that my Joule was on its way. I received my Joule, unpacked it and placed it into its recently purchased plastic cooking container and started busting out recipes. Some recipes came out bad while others came out breathtakingly great. The one common denominator in all of this cooking was the fact that my Joule was not with out fault. It failed a couple of times to connect with wifi and other times my phone could not locate my Joule. Recently I had some pretty serious problems with it not reaching a specific temperature for an entire day of trying different things . Then Thanksgiving evening I pulled it out of the water to give it a dry before putting it away when I noticed the plastic poly carbonate that wraps Joules internals was warped and appeared to have melted. I immediately contacted Chefsteps by email to let them know about my experience. Ellen replied back to me very quickly apologizing for my experience and to let me know that they had shipped out another Joule to replace my unit and a shipping return sticker so that I can return my faulty Joule.

I can say that my hopes when I purchased my Joule were that I would not have to deal with these types of problems. As a professional Chef you need to be able to count on your tools to work properly or they can really get you into hot water (pun intended). In addition to properly working tools as a Chef, I need to have a strong working relationship with my vendors. I can say that even with the problems that I have experienced with my Joule I am happy with it. It performs well (most of the time) and has contributed to expanding my cooking knowledge. Where I am beyond happy is with the customer service Chefsteps is offering. Its refreshing to deal with a company that stands behind their product completely and is ready to make things right for their customers. I am beyond happy doing business with a company that aims extremely high to create a product that will improve my abilities in the kitchen even if they fall short on that promise because they deliver well above 100 percent in customer service.

Thank you so much Chefsteps and Ellen!!! Great Work!!!!!!!!!

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Comments

phyllisperkins

Has anyone had a problem with a Joule causing electric circuits to cut off? I have a different sous vide machine -- bought years ago -- which has always operated flawlessly. I recently bought Joules for my 2 daughters who didn't yet have one. The machines arrived the day before Thanksgiving and my daughters brought them to my house for Thanksgiving so I could use them as well as my own to reheat turkeys I had smoked for the Thanksgiving meal for 40 people. One of the Joules kept causing a circuit to break. I moved it to two other different electrical outlets and each time the circuit broke. The other Joule worked well as did my own sous vide machine. Has anyone else had this problem? Suggestions?

wolfiegirl

Do exactly what Nathan (and a few others have had to do) by opening a ticket with CS. Ellen or someone else on the fabulous CS team will be Johnny-on-the-spot and take care of your issue in a very quick and speedy manner.

As for the particular issue of shorting out circuits, I have two Joules (Bob and Bob Jr) and both work flawlessly. So yeah....giddyup and contact CS!

Cheers!!

brian_martin2001

You might have overloaded the circuit. Definitely do what Byrdie and Nathan suggest, but also, check to see how many appliances are drawing power on that particular circuit. When heating up the water, the way I understand it, Joule draws a larger amount of power than the amount of power it needs to sustain a temperature. If there are too many things plugged in, it may be overloading that particular circuit, causing it to trip the breaker.

hairyotter_273859

My Bamix does the same thing on one of my outlets when I pulse the high speed button. I'm not an electrician but I'm a big time consumer of electrical appliances so I'm just guessing you have the same problem I had. I found an outlet in my kitchen that must be on a different circuit with fewer thing connected to it. Switching outlets solved my problem. If all your kitchen outlets are on the same circuit then a don't think switching outlets will help. So it's probably an electrical issue with load capacity or you might have a defective Joule. If the Joule worked fine at your daughter's house then I'm guessing the second Joule was the straw that broke the camel's back drawing too many Watts for that circuit. Did you try switching Joules to see if the circuit tripped only when one particular joule was plugged in or only when both were plugged in at the same time? It's similar to having an outlet that trips when using a curling iron and a blow dryer at the same time in the bathroom. Hope this info helps.