I’ve seen FAQs and troubleshooting pages that say clean the contacts with alcohol, and that works, but I seriously have to do that every time I run it. The only other thing that will work is jamming something under the Roomba to lean it onto the charging contacts. Is it a crappy base? Are there any diy tricks to give the base better contact?
You are correct that you shouldn’t have to clean the contacts each time. Roombas charge through the electrical contacts on the base station and Roomba, passing electricity from your wall to a battery on the Roomba. From your post it doesn’t sound like a base station or battery issue.
We need to diagnose the root cause. It sounds like it’s not a contact issue since you’ve been cleaning them regularly. Check your base station contacts as well.
Is your floor uneven? You shouldn’t have to wedge something under the Roomba. If you pick up the Roomba and place it on the base station, does it charge? To me so far it sounds like an issue with the Roomba correctly emplacing on the base station. I would try a different location for the base station to see if that rectifies the issue. If not we can continue diagnosing.
Manually placing the Roomba on the base will make it charge for a split second then it stops. Maybe there is minor unevenness. I’ll move it to another wall but without rearranging all my furniture there’s really only one spot for it to go.