Westbend 54159 Coffee Percolator

Just as background, I grew up in a household where we used both stove-top and electric percolators for brewing conventional heavy grind retail coffees. I’ll add that I’m also a past member, joining in 2006, of the US Specialty Coffee Association. I maintain a small roasting and commercial brewing counter in my home shop. Coffee and all its brewing gear is my avocation. Wanting to get back to percolator-brewing, we bought this Westbend unit about 38 days ago. About one week ago after having brewed our morning coffee, I smelled what I know as an electrical-insulation burnt-odor and/or a burnt coffee odor. For the first few days I suspected the coffee. To isolate the issue I brewed a few different coffees. Each time there was that same odor combined but overwhelming the coffee aroma. We double-checked the coffee by brewing with my Melitta pour-over system; no odor other than the aroma of the coffee. I then looked at the inside of the percolator and noticed a dark spot, silver-dollar size, near the inside edge of the brewing area. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a hot-spot, over-heating and either caused by the heating coil element’d proximity to the bottom of the brewing body, and/or the burning of insulation material. Whatever it is, I’m concerned it’s a safety hazard at this time. I never remember my parents, or me in my early adult years, returning any electric percolators. After years of use they usually went to storage only because we wanted the newer designs or larger capacities, not because they failed. But that was in the 60s through the 80s. Unfortunately with what I’ve seen in more recent household appliances, I’m not surprised with quality control issues, but certainly disappointed. I ran a review-search on this percolator and found a number of both ‘burnt odor smell’ issues and even more concerning, negative reports on West Bend’s warranty coverage service. I’ll start by contacting Amazon as we’ve only had the machine for 38 days. Obviously, if your looking for a percolator, I’d highly recommend looking at other percolator options. And specifically, I’d suggest using the Amazon review options/resources to check for related key word issues.