My mother has a Black & Decker "Cafe Noir" Coffee Maker, model DCM1400, that appears to have a problem of enabling the programmable timer on its own. She and my father are both technically deficient, so she never even bothers to set the clock, much less try to program it to cut on in the morning. Both are elderly, and Mom is up with the chickens anyway, so there's really no need to set the clock.
She's had this coffee maker for several months without any problems. The first glitch occurred about 3 weeks ago. She had washed the supper dishes and then as normal, she prepared the coffee maker for the morning brew. About 15 minutes later, the thing turned on by itself. It had almost finished by the time someone discovered it.
The next time was last night. She was in bed, but her arthritis was paining her. She got up to take a pain pill and put some ice on her wrist. She was sitting in the lounge chair in the livingroom about 11:45 when she became aware of the coffee brewing. I happened to be spending the night and was up, also in the livingroom surfing the net on my laptop. I got out the manual for a cursory look. The "auto" light was on, indicating that the timer was in "program" mode. I've shown my mother where the light is located so she can check before she goes to bed at night. There doesn't seem to be any way to accidentally set the program timer. There are too many buttons to click and hold while setting the ON time, plus a final press of the AUTO button to enable the timer. I suppose the best thing to do would be to go buy them a simple coffee maker with no frills or special features. They are practical, old-fashioned parents. A coffee maker should make coffee. Period.
Anybody had a similar experience? I would think an intermittent fault in the programmable timer is the most likely culprit. I wouldn't think failure to set the clock could cause the program to set itself. It has me curious now. I'd love to be able to find a leaky capacitor or a cold solder joint causing the problem, but it's so little money it's hardly worth fooling with. If you can help let me know.
-robert-