The modern version of an old saying – buyer beware ...
Bad news for those who have availed themselves of a flat white when they visit me and Lin – no more coffee machine. I’ve given up after a lengthy saga of misfortune with the popular Breville coffee-maker, the BES870.
I’ve had two fail and now I’ve asked the New Zealand retailer to give me a refund – an outcome recently approved by Breville’s head office in Australia.
The Aussies wanted me to send the second one to Auckland for “troubleshooting”, as they put it, but after reading reviews on Breville’s own website and an independent one called ProductReview.com.au, I feared more wasted time. When it comes to the repair of coffee machines, there’s a lot of unhappy customers.
My love affair with home-brewed coffee goes back a long way. I’d had a little Breville expresso unit for about five years, and apart from occasionally leaking water down the insides to fill the storage tray, it performed brilliantly.
I decided to upgrade. The BES870, a more up-to-date, bigger, gleaming, silver-steel ship with a built-in bean grinder beckoned.
I bought the first one last September, but despite much experimentation with bean varieties and grinder settings, I found it made insipid coffee, and leaked copiously down the back into the storage tray.
Breville’s PR person had this to say about that: “… the leaking … that is coming from under the machine that goes into the drip tray is normal and is not leaking. The drip tray is in place to catch this water; this is the water left over in the machine after you have finished using (it). It is normal to have to empty the drip tray every two to three days depending on how often you are using the machine.”
Noted. But it also fills the storage tray within the drip tray, wetting accoutrements that are in packets. I took it back, but the replacement, as well as leaking and making poor coffees, jammed on de-scaling. Was I just unlucky, or were we looking at a pattern?
The hundreds of BES870 reviews I found online certainly showed much enthusiasm for Breville products, but plenty of discontent, as well. While Breville’s website had only 26 complaints from 590 (4% or 4.7/5), ProductReview. com had 119 from 795 (14% or 4.3/5).
Good or bad, reviews must be treated with caution, of course - review writers don’t sign with their full names. Are glowing reviews commissioned by manufacturers and negative ones by their competitors? There’s no way to know.
Examples on ProductReview.com include this said of a Breville unit like mine: “More pain than pleasure: In the first 11 months of its life, it was a great machine… Then the steam switch stopped working. It went in for repair for six weeks, and upon switching on for the first time at home, it leaked over my benchtop and still didn’t steam.” Breville replaced it. “The second machine lasted seven months before the buttons stopped working and the machine was unresponsive aside from switching on and off. This time the new machine spent eight weeks in for repair. The machine has been home and working for three weeks and is suddenly unresponsive again … I would not recommend this machine.”
Or: “Unfortunately, we received a faulty machine, having to go in for repairs twice until I contacted Breville, who arranged a replacement. Since we’ve got the replacement, the machine has been amazing.” The majority: “Great little unit: I’ve had this little unit for 3½ years now with no issues. We have absolutely put it through its paces and it still operates as new. We have performed routine descales and cleans using approved products. It took a while to get the brew settings perfect when we first got it, but once we got it right, we haven’t needed to alter anything.”
Questions put to Breville revealed only one model of the BES870 is sold in New Zealand; problems vary – most are repaired, some replaced, some refunded. They were designed in Oz where Breville was founded in 1932, and are now made in China.
Some review writers said they would try the other big seller, De’Longhi. Howythe Magnifica S ECAM22110SB, had 69 negative ProductReview.com reviews out of 326, which is an even worse complaint rate of about 21%.
I looked at Italian machines, but the ones that seemed promising had no review comments, so in the end I gave up.