Are Memphis Grills now junk or have we just had really bad luck?

Our new Memphis Elite was installed 2 July this year so a bit over 3 months ago. We’ve had numerous and consistent problems since it was installed. We are currently on our 3rd controller, 2nd WiFi card, 2nd internal temp probe and 2nd meat probe.

We were excited about the Memphis for the first summer in our new house. Unfortunately it has been either mostly non-functioning or completely non-functioning until late August and has been unreliable but partially useable since.

Past problems have included:

• WiFi won’t connect. Numerous problems that took considerable efforts to get around including replacing WiFi card, installing a special WiFi AP for this grill, creating a special WLAN just for this grill due to inability to handle normal passwords, Memphis fixing errors in the database, …and many more.
• The controller sometimes gets stuck at 180°f (Smoke Mode). The only way to change it was to turn it off, wait for Cool Down Mode to complete, then turn on again.
• Sometimes grill temp indicated on the controller will begin to decline for no reason.
• Changes itself to Keep Warm mode even when meat probe temps indicated on controllers are significantly below set temps indicated on controller. E.G., set temp is 140°, meat probe indicates 72°, but it says Done and changes to Warm Mode.
• Fire. After about 40 minutes of warming up to cook the probe temp suddenly began declining very quickly. This was followed by an excessive amount of smoke and then the smell of burning rubber. We put it in Cool Down Mode. 12 minutes later, still on Cool Down Mode, when we opened it there were excessive flames from the burn pot. Our extinguisher would not extinguish the fire. Fire dept came.

Current unresolved issues with 3rd controller:

• During Cool Down Mode it will suddenly turn itself back on and begin feeding pellets and heating up.
• Sometimes leaves a lot of pellets in the burn pot after Cool Down Mode. Once overflowing in to drip pans, several times to the brim of the burn pot, several times maybe 20 or so in the burn pot. Sometimes none. Eric from Memphis says that this is normal and is to pre-dry pellets before the next cook. This is however inconsistent with Memphis saying to clean the burn pot before every cook and that it sometimes results in a full or overflowing burn pot isn't right. Also, is there a need to pre-dry the pellets? Has ignition due to damp pellets been a problem?
• Occasional significant overshoot of set temp by 100°f or more. However, it will not come back down to the set temp but remains high. When this happens it is numerous times during a single cook and does not happen at all during other cooks. Eric from Memphis says that this is normal.
• Press and release the UP button on the controller but temp setting continues to increase to 700°. Once at 700° we can press the down button or use the app to get to the temp we desire.
• Once turned itself on randomly.
• When turning it ON initially for a cook and setting the temp it will then frequently, after 3-10 minutes, reset the temp to whatever the last temp used for the previous cook was. Besides a PITA, this is a safety concern when, per Eric's instruction, we set the temp to 375° to burn off any grease but it changes itself to 650° which is above the flash point of most grease.
• Will not ignite. Starting from a clean burn pot it will feed pellets but not ignite resulting in the burn pot overflowing w/ pellets, then an Error 2 - Undertemp message, etc.
• Grill will not turn off. After holding OFF button the controller will display ‘Goodbye’ (not hot enough for Cool Down Mode) and turn off but then after about 10 seconds turn itself back on and begin feeding pellets and trying to ignite them. This happens when the pellets do not ignite as well as one other time. Requires unplugging.
• During a cook the fire will go out for no explainable reason, temp will drop, but it will continue to feed pellets until unplugged. In this case there is no under temp warning or other indication of a problem on the controller or app.
• App error that it thinks you want to turn the grill OFF even when the OFF button is not on.
• Beeping & unable to turn off. After cooking but while the grill was still on it began giving a 4 second long beep every 10-15 minutes. We were unable to turn the grill off from the app or from the controller - it would restart itself about 10-20 seconds in to Cool Down Mode. Once we did get it to turn off the 4 second beep every 10-15 minutes continued for about 1 hr. This happened once.

These problems seem to be most prevalent in grills manufactured in 2020 with those manufactured prior being much more reliable?

Are there some 2020 grills (particularly Elites) that function 100% correctly with none of these problems?

Are others having similar problems?

Is this mostly or only a 2020 issue?

The one issue that seems to have existed prior to 2020 is the bug where the grill changes its temp to the last set temp from the prior cook. This seems a software coding bug that many people have complained about yet has never been fixed?
Given how many problems we’ve had with how many controllers this appears an overall quality control problem rather than one or two bad controllers which does not give me hope for a solution.

Aside from these problems we really like the Memphis but these problems make it unreliable and unusable and are certainly unacceptable in a $5000 grill. If the problems are correctable we’d like to keep the Memphis but if not then we need to get something different.

Thanks,

Thanks. Stuff happens. If problems get corrected then I'm OK. Memphis have been slower than we'd like in responding to stuff (especially when we're without a grill for weeks at a time during the summer in a new lakehouse) but they've responded well and have a solid reputation.

My concern is that this is a bigger problem. Three controllers have all been quite problematic so I'm not sure that another controller swap or even an entire new grill would fix the problems unless they make some significant changes in the design, manufacturing or programming. Others have also reported some of these problems on new grills but I'm not sure how widespread it is. Is it that 20% of controllers are bad and 80% good and so we just need to get one of the good ones?

We're thinking about it but switching to MAK wouldn't be easy. This is built-in so it'd require a bit of not inexpensive stone re-work.

And for us, if it was more reliable, the Memphis is a better option. It has more grill area than the MAK 3-Star and is more efficient with it since it doesn't have the divider down the middle. I'm often grilling burgers, brats, steaks or whatever for 30 or more people (big family) and the Memphis will be barely large enough.

The MAK doesn't have enough depth for a large pizza stone (we do pizza's every Friday night).

I much prefer the Memphis iPhone App to the MAK browser interface. That's minor but...

The MAK is, I think, better at smoking and I do like the dual nature of it. I also like that you can program a cook program for it to follow. Most of all, I like the idea that it may actually do what they say it does which Memphis so far has proven unable to accomplish.

Curt.P said:

I wonder if I could adapt the Mak controller to my Memphis...

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THAT would be a great solution! At least for us.

Curt.P said:

We should get together and compare notes...

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I wasn't aware of the security hole. That's horrendous.

WiFi has been working well for us now. The fix involved a number of things;

1) The antenna location on the grill was a problem because our AP (Unifi Nano HD) was on the opposite side and even though just 12' away was apparently blocked by the grill itself. Various signal tests indicated very strong signals but the Memphis was still weak. An AP installed 38' out in front of the grill but direct line of sight without the grill itself in the way worked. I also wonder if extending the antenna and mounting it on the wall behind the grill might have worked but some like this are designed for a very specific length so I'm guessing not.

2) 1 New WiFi card & 2 new cables.

3) Created a WLAN just for Memphis with a much less secure but Memphis approved password.

4) Zakk repaired problems in the database. I think twice.

5) Disabled all SSID's except the one for Memphis since the Memphis app will only list 3-5 and between us and neighbors we see about 15-20. Took a couple of tries for the right one to show up.

6) Pure dumb luck. It took numerous tries, unloading and redownloading the app,
a few cuss words and it finally took.

It'd have been much easier if we could have just done direct ethernet but that's not an option w/ Memphis.

pjtexas1 said:

I'd be afraid to leave that thing plugged into power. Can you get a refund?

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Yeah. Almost impossible given where it's plugged in and what it takes to get to the plug. As our builder and electrician said "It's a built-in appliance, you don't have to ever unplug a built-in appliance unless you're removing it for service."

Since all of our problems they've added a new thing on their website (https://memphisgrills.com/shop/built-ins/memphis-elite-built-in/). I wish they'd had something about the need for a separate switch in their installation manual. Or better, included it on their unit.

Thanks all. The surge strip is a good idea for a temp way to turn the power on/off. I should have thought about that.

I don't know that they're snubbing me. Yet. If the problem is as widespread as it seems then I think they're not sure what the solution is. Swapping poor quality controllers for other poor quality controllers isn't a solution and that's what they've mostly done so far.

Seemingly they need to solve their poor quality manufacturing in some way before they'll have a solution - a reliable controller. If on the other hand this is an issue of only a few controllers being so poor quality rather than most or all then they simply need to find one that functions properly and throw it in.