Roomba - one month later (or so)

Well,
it's been a month since I received my Roomba Scheduler from the Woot Off, and to be honest, I was not too impressed with the initial battery life.
Our Roomba is reconditioned which means it may have some slight cosmetic defects, but none I noticed. (and for a device that spends its life bumping into furniture and walls - slight cosmetic defects come with the territory)

What was more of a concern was the very short battery life. Even with the recommended initial charge session of 72 hours, it would only run for approximately 20 minutes before dying where it stood.

I read the forums over at roombareview.com, and tried all of the known working remedies for a battery charge issue, but even after letting it sit for a solid week on the charger, it still would not run longer than 20 minutes.

I finally broke down and called iRobot since the Roomba was still within the 90 day warranty period.
The voice mail prompts were kinda tricky - but after convincing the system that I had indeed tried the usual methods I was put in touch with a live human being.

After explaining to him what the problem was and what all I had tried - he agreed it was probably a bad battery and told me he was sending me a new one - at no charge under warranty.

The battery actually arrived the very next day!

I did the 72 hour initial charge cycle with this battery - and on the 4th day crossed my fingers and pressed "Clean". Not only was it still running at the magical 20 minute mark - but the power indicator was still bright "Green" when normally it would have been flashing "Red" by that point.

After a half hour I left the room but kept monitoring it (listening) and it kept running well over an hour and a half before it decided the area as clean and returned to the base.

In the past, whenever it decided the power level was low enough to warrant a return to the base, it usually ran out of juice 10 seconds or so later - which resulted in it expiring within sight of the base.

We have ran it a half dozen times now since receiving the new battery and it is now working perfectly!

iRobot of course announced a new and improved version of the Roombas soon after I received mine - but I have no regrets, especially considering the price I paid during the Wootoff for it.