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I watched this video and was very excited to try out the powder, since I’ve just been using the pods they sell at Costco for my entire adult life.

But there are Problems.

1. You can’t find powder anywhere. Not a single grocery store near me sells it. Gel, sure. Pods, sure. Powder, not even Wal-mart had it, and they have everything. I finally found a faded and dented box at an Ace Hardware, where I wasn’t even looking for it.

2. The pour spout is a pain in the butt to open. I don’t have long nails (due to a very bad habit), and it takes me dozens of seconds every time to open.

3. A single clump makes it even more annoying. Now you have to figure out how to break the clump (because it’s blocking the spout), or you have to shake the box for a long time.

4. Speaking of shaking. If you get too much powder in the cracks around the dispenser, it won’t close anymore! Now you have to figure out how to get the powder out of the cracks before you can close and run the machine.

I’m sure it’s cleaning my dishes a little better, but I am not going to buy another box of powder. The marginal convenience of the pods is much higher than Alec claims. I’m going back to the product that I can actually buy in enormous bulk at Costco.




Yep, that seems like what happened. I went down the detergent aisle at my local grocery store today, and they had a brand-name and two different scents of store-brand powdered detergent.


Definitely possible there was a powder shortage. Pods and gel were always available though.


For comparison, this is my experience:

1. Easily available at every grocery store for half the price of pods

2. I just leave the spout open and it's fine

3. It doesn't clump

4. Occasionally the door does fail to close but I quickly brush it off

The dishes are perfectly clean after a normal program, whereas the pods required me to use a three hour power wash program for the same result.


It's also easy to tell how many pods/loads you have left. Switched to Finish pods after Cascade powder stopped working for me. They took out the phosphorus or whatever apocalyptic chemical du jour it was. Things are almost as clean.


Didn’t they take the phosphorus out of everything due to algae overgrowth or something?


Get yourself one of those coffee dosing spoons or just a normal tablespoon. Have not had any problem with dosing.


The gel detergent is more convenient than the powder for the reasons you mentioned


>You can’t find powder anywhere.

Some dishwashers don't even work well with non-powders.


Check the dollar store.




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