I bought this after having experienced 12-cup thermal-carafe coffee makers at two of my stepkids' homes. The ability to not have a glass carafe, and have hot coffee for my typical consumption of the full 12 cups, over a typical ~2-hour period, without having to worry about scorching the coffee appealed to me greatly.Both of those households liked their coffee considerably stronger than I, and so very fully filled their (in both cases) gold-mesh filters, one each round and cone style. So it was with considerable surprise that my 4-heaping-tablespoon-scoops coffee load (first picture) resulted in:Every single time, my brew basket came out looking like the second or third picture. I brewed every single day I owned this machine (returning it for refund on the last possible day, 34 pots later). Never was there no grounds in the basket. Sometimes a few, and ...Sometimes a lot, resulting in the top of the carafe looking like the 4th picture. I can't imagine what the outcome of putting in 12 tablespoons (nominally at least twice the load of my heaping tablespoon-scoop) would have been.Never was any potful free of drips. Sometimes, a LOT of drips. The most egregious of them looked like the last two pictures. It got to the point where I was NEVER without a folded paper towel next to my mug in order to catch the drips.I did everything I could think of to eliminate the drips. Tilt the pot, and THEN push the pouring seal. Push the pouring seal and THEN pour. Scrub the gasket between the top and the pot, and the gasket between the on/off pouring seal. The best I ever achieved was a few drips down the front of the pot. The worst is in the pictures.That's all the negative stuff.The coffee was great. The pot, lid, and basket were easy to clean. If I didn't mind the occasional instance of grounds in my coffee, or having to clean up every single time I brewed, sometimes several times in the 4 pours (my mug is a full pint, also insulated), the inevitable drips, I likely would have kept it, as the coffee was fine.A minor nuisance was that the water tank was a bit difficult to fill accurately without paying very strict attention, as the spray unit divided the width exactly in half, making a relatively small target for the full carafe.As I followed the recommendation of the owner's manual and preheated the carafe before brewing, I never actually used the preset/overnight-ready setup; in fact, I stowed it in the cabinet directly over where I brewed, so it always displayed a flashing 12:00 - but I expect it would have worked as intended.I (obviously) have no idea why the carafe leaked or whatever-other-mechanism caused my drip issues. But I'm certain I could not have improved the coffee grounds issue, given my care in leveling my load, and the fact that it was perhaps a third of the normal load for the 12-cup brew I did each time. The only way I can conceive for that failure is that the drain wasn't sufficiently large.I admit that, not having had an endoscope to sneak in during brewing I never got to see the effects of the multi-directional spray bar; I'd thought it a fantastic idea and it was one of the reasons I purchased this model. It may have been that the pressure was a bit too much and caused splashing of the grounds, but the very even level of the empty-of-water basket suggests otherwise, and that it simply overflowed the filter paper.One other niggle. As you can see, I have a wide-bottomed insulated mug. It's a leftover from my 15 years of cruising on a sailboat. So old that it's unobtanium now, and I've made it safe to use with an electrical tie reinforcement to the handle. But I digress... The subject pot gave me 4 cupfuls - the usual "12 cups" - if you count leaving a half-inch or so space at the top on each fill. So, this carafe, spiller though it was, wouldn't deliver a full 12 cups, despite my filling it to the brim, and being rewarded, most times, with spillover (overfill as far as this one's water reservoir was concerned).For whatever it's worth, Amazon immediately refunded my purchase, for which I had already used up the credit to my 'wallet' by ordering the other version I'd considered when ordering this one. It's the very similar-looking https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2JK9Y8V - which I've used several times since my return of the subject unit, and found the resulting coffee grounds' level as expected, which is to say the dark line went only about halfway up the edge. And furthermore, it delivers an honest 12 cups - 4 fills of my ancient mug, with only space enough left to put on the sipper, no-spill lid - every time. And the water reservoir fill opening is massive by comparison.If you're considering the two, I'd definitely recommend the link immediately above, and give THIS one a pass.