By 

J. Levanon “jl” (Seattle, WA) –

  

I have purchased this coffee maker because I tasted the coffee it makes at a friends party. It was awesome. My friend had his machine for a few weeks and was very excited about it. This is a good looking machine, easy to fall in love with. I immediately went to purchase one. That’s when my problems started. and by the way, so did my friend’s. If you don’t want to read any further, the summary is – DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY ON THIS MACHINE!!!

Pros: When it works, it makes wonderful coffee

Cons: you need about 10 minutes to read this and let it sink
1. Usability – after a few weeks of use it stopped working. The first problem with this machine is its usability – specifically, feedback to problems. It has a very capricious operation and the feedback it provides whenever a problem occurs is illegible. It is capricious because, it complains when (a) the water tank is half empty. When it complains you cannot make a decision to override it – in other words, when the red light goes on because your water tank is half empty, you cannot continue making coffee until you fill it up again. It takes 2-3 lattes to empty half the water tank – in other words, if you have several people for coffee, you can keep yourself busy filling the water tank, forget about polite conversations; (b) after 2-3 lattes you are also forced to dispose off of the used coffee, as it doesn’t let you make your own decision, even though the disposal container takes a third of the volume of the machine and has plenty capacity to store 30 times more.
2. Reliability – I have this coffee maker for less than three months. It has been in repair 2 times, for a total of over a month. The first time I had to send it for repair after only three weeks of use, when the red light stayed on, no matter what I did. Customer service determined that the machine was faulty and asked me to send it for repair. It came back after 14 days with a note that they found nothing wrong with it! Miraculously it now worked, yet, while the red light problem went away, there was another, new problem. Now when I made espresso, the steam hose was dripping concurrently and profusely, emptying the water tank even faster then it already did under normal conditions. Called customer service again. They diagnosed it as a potential problem with an O-ring and asked me to send the machine for repair again, this time to their center in Ohio. I sent the machine for the second repair on November 14th, and I still don’t have it back as of this writing (Dec 9, 2009) – you do the math!!! AND YES, THEY HAD TO REPLACE ALL THE O-RINGS IN THE MACHINE, SO PLEASE TAKE A PITY ON YOUR MACHINE AND TRY NOT TO USE YOURS EXCESSIVELY, MAYBE A CUP A WEEK OR SO…
3. Customer Service – this is the worst customer service money can buy. It is not that the reps are not nice – they are very nice and courteous. However, they are completely ineffective, dis-empowered to make any decisions (everything goes to a supervisor, her manager, and so on). When you’re on the phone with the customer service rep, (which they have one of, judging by the wait time of 30 minutes on the average, and the fact that you get the same one every time) it may take 3-4 “waiting in between” times for him to go ask the supervisor how to answer my question or what to do with my request. And it goes on and on. By the way – don’t call during lunch as you will get a voice prompt politely asking you to call back as the company is out to lunch – literally! And yes, if you thought you can get a status of repair on your coffee machine you paid so much for, forget about it. They have no ability to tell you anything except that “its on the workbench” or its not on the workbench… If they promise to call you back to let you know what’s going on, because now it has been three weeks and you have called them multiple times, sent them multiple mail messages, etc., don’t hold your breath – they won’t get back to you, guaranteed. And guess what, having gone through all this, they won’t send your machine overnight. If you have an issue with this, here is the reply you will get (I got this earlier today):
“I’m sorry that you feel that way. You should have been told that our turnaround right now is roughly 2 weeks. As I stated before, we are the main warranty center for THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES. THIS IS THE HOLIDAY SEASON. WE ASK OUR CUSTOMER TO BE PATIENT WITH US DURING THIS EXTREMELY BUSY SEASON. We ship standard ground. Anything other than standard ground must be paid for by the customer.” It reminds me of the movie “My Cousin Vinny”, when the whole store got the flu… The “roughly 2 weeks” she quotes has been 4 weeks now, so “roughly” goes a long way with Saeco. It also shows you how busy they are with repair – the more they sell, the more they are swamped with faulty coffee machines.

Will update you when I get the machine back. Obviously I would have returned it to Amazon within the first…

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