Aerogarden gone wild... what now?

May 2, 2008 7:05 AM

My Aerogarden has gone totally haywire! What can I do?

After seeing an Aerogarden as a Christmas gift suggestion here in the green, I got one myself. I've been growing tomatoes, and after one unsuccessful batch (they rotted off at the bases early in the game) I started anew and now I actually have little green tomatoes growing! My Aerogarden was smoothly going along turning on at 7:00 AM and off at 11:00 PM. Then this morning it suddenly went on at 5:20 AM (it's in the bedroom, so this caused me to dream I was having a stroke), and then began to flash on and off erratically. All the lights on the front panel went on as well, blinking on and off in no particular pattern. The different plant setting indicators started flashing in a circle. This went on for a bit and then I couldn't stand it anymore and unplugged it and went back to sleep.

At seven I plugged it in again for more of the same. I've left it on because intermittent flashing light is probably better than nothing, but I'm very concerned. And I was so close to a crop, too!

I've emailed Aerogarden's Customer Service, but since this is a concern and not an order I don't expect to be hearing from them in a hurry. I've had this Aerogarden since December. Anybody else have one of these devices act up like this? Should it be breaking down so quickly? Is there something I can do to troubleshoot this? After all this, I want the dang tomatoes!

posted by Wylie Kyoto to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

My mother had an excellent experience with their phone customer service (1-800-476-9669). They walked her through various testing / reset steps, and mailed a replacement part to her (no charge) when that turned out to be necessary.
posted by Perplexity at 7:43 AM on May 2, 2008

Unplug it. When an appliance is having an electrical problem the last last thing you should do is plug it in, unless you want a fire.

I also have a friend who called their customer service line and had good results.
posted by sanka at 7:52 AM on May 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

I haven't had this problem with my Aerogarden, but I agree with the above posters that their customer service is great. I would think that they will respond to your email quickly, but if not, call the help desk and you will get a real person and he/she will be friendly and helpful.

This link on the troubleshooting section of their website says you can perform a "factory reset," maybe you could try that.
posted by slenderloris at 9:25 AM on May 2, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks, folks. I'm usually so horrified at the idea of actually calling Customer Service and being kept on eterna-hold that I'll avoid it at all costs. But thanks to you I called; the man I spoke to was nice and very helpful, very little hold time was involved, and they're sending me a new base for the thing no charge. The wild flashing seems to have stablilized, so I just have to plug and unplug it in for the time being.
posted by Wylie Kyoto at 11:05 AM on May 2, 2008

it took days for me to get a reply via email. But I wasn't on hold but a couple of minutes when I called.
posted by nimsey lou at 3:24 PM on May 2, 2008