I bought this for my daughter last month and we have been using it ever since. We have not experienced any problems at all. We freeze over ripe bananas and buy frozen berries in bulk to use. Clean-up is amazingly simple as well. You really cannot get any easier than this machine. I am not sure why some people have problems. So far we have used bananas, strawberries, blue berries, mango and pineapple. We love this machine. I am going to buy a couple more to give as gifts.