Product review (1 stars): Charcoal Bleed After 4 Months
I originally purchased this filter 4 months ago. It worked fine. At least I think it was working fine. I have no way of testing the effectiveness of a water filter. Is it really filtering and removing lead or bacterial contaminants? How can I know? The water is clear to my naked eye, no matter how good or bad the filter is. So, all I can really say is that, to the best of my knowledge, for the first four months, this filter "worked fine."

Until this morning (1/19/16)...

I went to get some water from the 'fridge, thru the filter system, for my morning coffee. The water had swirling bits of fine charcoal grains. I thought it might just be a minor and temporary leak of charcoal, so I poured out that water, and went back for another cup full. But after several cups of water that I got, the charcoal granules only INcreased! This was a major and unacceptable failure of the filter.

I had not yet thrown away the previous filter. I had saved it until I was sure its replacement worked well.  I put the previous filter back in the 'fridge where it worked just fine, for over a year, and without leaking any charcoal into my drinking water. It needed some flushing through the system to eliminate all the charcoal granules that were still in the system from this filter, but the water finally did clear up.
I brought up this filter purchase in my Account to see if I could send it back for a refund, but the window for returning this filter had closed.

I re-ordered the former filter from 2014 that had 4.5 stars from some 1,800 reviewers.