Quality Toaster . . . hum

Key thing to remember with this toaster -- the 1100 watts cooks fast on first batch thru, faster and hotter on the second batch. If you're cranking out a bunch of toast, you'll need to drop the heat selection down a notch or two.

My folks were experiencing a dilemma in trying to find a basic toaster which actually worked. After buying 5 toasters, my step mom had been unable to find one which would toast on both sides. So I accepted the challenge of trying to find one as a Christmas present. She had one condition, I test the toaster before gifting it. Checked Epinions, and user reviews on several sites. At the time I was searching for the toaster, there were only two reviews on the Kenmore Elite two slice toaster MFR # 135101. One hated it, one loved. It has slice adjusters, does bagels, and operates at 1100 watts (which means fast cooking). I decided to give it chance and bought one. Got some bread and got on the phone with my stepmother (amid much laughter). It actually toasted evenly on both sides and did it under a minute. I tried bagels. After three tries (trying to find the desired setting) and got a bagel toasted as I liked it. Voila Christmas gift. Well, my mom was interested so went to order one online to be sent to her, and saw more less enthused reviews had been added. I went down to the store and both a second one and tried it out. It flunked English muffins, but does regular toast and bagels nicely. By the way, another review said the toaster used radiant tubes. This is not true. The two toasters I got used tightly wrapped electric coils. Based on the initial failure with the English muffins, I put a review on the Sears website. And guess what, they didn't print it. Could it be because I questioned their philosophy on quality (essentially production of widgets is more important than overall quality)? And/or because I expressed my general ambiguity about Sears products overall because they no longer maintain the overall quality one used to get many years ago?