Cuprajake Yes! Agreed. Ideal but, unfortunately, not realistic. 😊
No body likes to receive machines with issues, irrespective of the cost of acquisition. We are also aware that obvious imperfections, faults and niggles do get captured during testing phase at the factory.
My experience in the coffee world is limited, but unlimited dealing with computers, software and technology. How many times we end up with pieces that require invoking onsite, return and collect and parts warranties? These doesn’t happen for every piece.
I will tell you a story. Our luck with technology is such that we have had issues with every computer, tablet and phone we purchased in the last 20 years. Bought a top-end workstation for £3k from a leading computer manufacturer in 2008. The mother board, RAM, Video card and graphics card have had problems within the first few months. They replaced them times 2-3 times. Since then, we never had to call out and is still running solid.
I am sure other expensive coffee machines have had their share of problems and are still having some. These things happen; we should draw a line where it is ok to troubleshoot fixes as long as they are mostly trouble free and doesn’t require anything other than standard parts replacements - gasket, valves, etc.
As home baristas, we are anyway expected to carry out maintenance and parts replacements. Anything that we can replace, I would expect the manufacturers and sellers to honour the warranties and send parts with instructions for replacements. If it can’t be fixed, it must be replaced - as long as warranties are in place.
No one is exception to the rule - be it ACS, Lelit, ECM, Lr, and so on.
