Automatic Litterbox Central

I just received my Litter Robot last week and I was so excited to get it after reading about it in this forum. Unfortunately all mine does is get stuck in the middle of the cycle and then the red light blinks. I've tried unplugging it and plugging it back in to get it to reset, but that doesn't work. The part of the cycle it gets stuck in is when the litter is out of the box, so my cats can't use it at all. I'm so disappointed! I went away for the weekend, so I have no idea how long it was in that state. It's a good thing I left a regular litter box out. I shudder to think what my house would be like if I hadn't. Has anyone had this problem? I just can't get it to work at all now. I think I will have to ship it back and I don't want to do that. But if I can't trust it I won't be able to go on any overnight trips. It's bad enough asking the neighbors to clean the regular box when I'm gone, but asking them to troubleshoot this machine would be worse. Any suggestions on why this is happening and what I can do about it. I will call customer service tomorrow, but in the meantime I have to block the entrance so the cats will not go in and try to use it.