Littermaid Elite Automatic Cleaning Litter Box Review

The Littermaid Mega Elite is better than having to scoop out a plain old litter box every day, but as with my first plain old Mega model it still leaves a lot to be desired.  It is not as sanitary for you to use as the commercials lead you to believe.  The plastic waste recepticles don't close tight and odors still get out as they fill up.  You have to make sure the containers corners snap in place by hand and the lids don't always stay on.  they have to be sealed with tape.  This is to even keep the smell in too.  They're also too expensive, and the charcoal doesn't always stuck to the lid.  But the original Mega had something over the Elite.  It cleaned the whole box out except, like Elite, it missed the ones stuck to the floor of the box, which the Elite also does.  The other things that both Megas had in common was that they were very sanitary for you when you had to change the waste containers.  You had to handle it, which means your hands came into close and sometimes actual contact with your cats' urine clumps and feces.  The containers on both models had to have the lids taped on.  Too close proximity to the contents.  The problems with the Elite that the standard Mega didn't have was that the front lip of the receptacle had to fit into a little notch along edge of the litter area.  The problem was is that this little slot didn't continue into the sides of the box.  The back side of the receptacle rested on two little pegs on either side.  The result of this was that when the litter clumps were dumed into the container it weighed down bowing the front of the container.  This let the litter fall through a gap onto the floor.  So the container had to be taped in to prevent that from happening, which meant your hands actually came into contact with the interior of the box.  Unsanitary.  I had to keep plently of hand sanitizer close by.  Also, with the rake being so far out because of the way it is positioned, there is a gap behind it which the earlier Megamaid didn't have.  This lets one of my cats who always urinates at the very back of the box to actually go behind the rake and the clumps build up to appoint where the rake can't get back into it's normal position and it won't stop moving.  The wire tines are great though.  I see a lot of improvements that need to made on this before it is what it should be.  I would rather have the Cat Genie, if I had the room and money for it.  Even with all of it's problems, it is still better than an ordinary box.  Now that I have one, I don't think I could recommond it.  With the price for it, it needs to better.