Outside of the quality and ease of use and all that other stuff Smokin-It smokers will give you, there is one other rare reason to go with Smokin-It. I say "rare", because it seems in today's world that true professional and personal customer service is getting to be just that....rare.
On just my second smoke with my SI#2 and Auber PID unit, I had a problem with the Auber. You can read about what happened in my post under Model #2 "Results of my 1st 2 smokes".
I had sent a video to DivotMaker, the moderator of this forum, showing him what the Auber was doing and if he had any idea what the problem was. He had never seen anything like what it was doing before and he voluntarily forwarded the video to Steve, the owner of Smokin-It. He also texted him to alert him to the problem. I called Smokin-It Tuesday morning - the number listed on the web-site, mind you, not a special # that DivotMaker gave me. And who answered the phone in 2 rings? Steve, the owner of the company. No secretary screening his calls, no endless automated phone system to muddle your way through, no foreign "customer support" service reading from a script that usually gets my blood to the boiling point. None of that.
Just the owner of the company - eager to make sure you are nothing but giddy about your purchase. This alone, makes it worth it to me. Steve told me to send it back and he would send me a new one. Easy as that. Try getting this kind of service from the big name smokers that you find in the stores. I'm not saying that they won't stand behind their products, but I seriously doubt that you would be able to call and have the owner of the company answer the phone.
1 other reason I chose Smokin-It: if you haven't done so already - look at the cost of replacement parts on their web-site. Things like the heater element and such. I was SOLD.
Get the Smokin-It and then join in on this forum. You just can't go wrong.
