The Rotadent electric toothbrush -- I keep crawling back to it

It took my money, it took my pride. I let it into my life, and then it died. I can't stay away because even though it's no good, it's sooo good. Am I living an Alicia Key's song? Or am I having a dysfunctional relationship with the Zila Rotadent?

Photo credit: Amazon
The Rotadent Classic, now discontinued

Flipping Rotadent. No other toothbrush can do what it does. (Great, now I'm a Whitney Houston song.) All other toothbrushes have widely-spaced bristles. It's like scrubbing a pot with a hairbrush, you leave stuff behind. The Rotadent brush head has tightly-packed filaments. The head rotates completely around like a Dremel tool. The pointy brush head gets between teeth. The flat brush head cleans tooth surfaces. No other toothbrush does this. Nothing cleans better.

Sounds great? No, it sucks.

First, the Rotadent costs around $130 dollars. Not so bad if it lasts for years, right? Sure, except for a lot of people it lasts less than a year. Mine was dead in six months. To be fair, other people say theirs have lasted six or more. Damn their eyes.

'Couple problems. First, it's not waterproof, so water gets in and corrodes the battery. Good thinking, Rotadent. Second, the battery gets a memory effect. You can't leave it charging all the time. But you shouldn't let it discharge completely, because that can sometimes ruin this type of battery for good.

Another problem. I would find that when I'd press the bristles against my teeth, the dang motor would cut out. I could use the flat brush head (great for cleaning tooth surfaces), but I couldn't use the pointy brush head (magnificent for cleaning between teeth). So I put the thing under the sink, along with all my hopes and dreams. After a month or so, I got a brain wave. Maybe it wasn't the motor--maybe it was the brush head! So I stuck a different pointy brush head on there and it worked great. But it needed a charge. I think I might have got fancy and tried to fully discharge it before charging it again. Whatever I did, I bricked it. Which leads me too...

The warranty sucks. The warranty is only good if you buy it from a dentist. I did, but I didn't register the product within 30 days of purchase so when the thing broke it was like, suck it up, sucker, and thanks for the $130.  From what I hear, I was lucky to even get through to somebody on the phone. At least they didn't make me wait for 20 minutes and disconnect me like others claim has happened to them.

I should have researched more. Yeah, their crappy "lifetime warranty" was no good, but I probably had an implied warranty under state law.  (Honestly, why did I even go to law school?)

Photo credit: Amazon
The Rotadent Plus

But getting back to my rant, the toothbrush, when it works, is awesome. And now, here's the best part--it's discontinued. It's still available online but since I'm ordering through my dentist, I have to get the new Rotadent Plus, which has even lower rating on Amazon than the original. But I'm still gonna do it because this hateful, two-faced lout of a toothbrush is just that good.

I hate myself.