American Range ARROB430L

It is with big frustration that I am reporting an unacceptable experience with American Range and their 30" Performer in liquid propane. Do not buy one unless you expect to get a perfect unit, because if you don't, be prepared to spend lots of time dealing with underperformance, defective parts, slow customer service, and ultimately denial that American Range is at fault if a repair tech cannot fix your range.Listen to this long list of malfunctions when we fired up the cooktop and oven for the first time - to very shoddy performance:1. The simmer burner lights the igniter area with a small flame but will not migrate to whole burner unless you jimmy the knob down to simmer and back to high several times back and forth until it finally lights the whole burner.2. The medium burner does not light on the primary igniter and instead lights at the secondary igniter placement.3. The back left high btu burner had a popping flame in the gap between the burner and the burner base.4. The front right high btu burner has lazy yellow flames.5. All burners backfire nearly every time they are turned off.6. Sometimes gas comes out and the igniter clicks but the burner will not light, creating a safety hazard.7. The oven is 15-50 degrees under the thermostat setting, unless you turn on the convection fan, which they don't tell you in their marketing materials.8. One of the large drip pans was riddles with paint specks and flecks - don't know how they missed that one when they were packaging it for shipping.9. The middle drip pan was painted brown when it is supposed to be black like the other pans and all of the knobs. Again, how did they miss that one.Two visits by repair techs did not work. They confirmed the gas pressure out of the wall is within the range specified by the manufacturer. They replaced the regulator and the burner assembly/bad igniter. Neither worked. They found an improperly machined part between the control knob and the burner with the faulty igniter, which explains why the replacement assembly did not fix the igniter issue. This is not a field repair (i.e., range replacement needed). The repair techs left after having exhausted all options to successfully repair the stove and gave their synopsis to American.That was a full week ago, and it's when American went silent. Several emails and tweets to them have not been answered. Emails to the distributor and sales company resulted in a call from the distributor. They said American Range maintains that the problem is with my gas supply pressure and not with their range. What!Do not believe for one second the philosophy written on their website: "Inspired by our passion for PERFECTION, renowned for our product innovation and QUALITY"...and..."We earnestly feel we have PERFECTED the professional home range." Since quality and perfection clearly did not get applied to my unit, I expect American to replace a defective range with a new properly-performing range.Sheesh. Noone wants to have an experience like this. I'm posting this review so others can at least be aware of what they would be getting into if they're not delivered a perfect American Range. I did not think a months-long remodel would get soured in the end by a defective range that is Made in America!Update 2/17/14: We're Still Getting Duped!After committing to replacing our defective range with a new range, and nearly 2 weeks of supposedly building it and tweaking the burners, American Range wrote me today saying: "We have finished our investigation/problem solving. We have a much better solution than replacing the entire range. The fix is new burner caps and removal of a diverter plate in the burner bases...By just changing the caps, it eliminates the risk of property damage to cabinets, flooring, doorways, etc. from moving an entire range in and out of house."Gee. Thanks for suggesting to improve the burners by unnecessarily replacing perfectly fine burner tops and by removing parts the range was designed to work with with, and for continuing to not address the defective controls/igniter on one of the burners and the oven that is unacceptably off temperature unless you use the optional convection fan, all in the name of eliminating risk to property damage.C'mon American Range. Start acting like a professional company by stopping this bait and switch and timely honoring your part of our contract - to provide us with a fully operational range that we purchased 2.5 months ago!