Why you might not want to buy a Londinium

DavecUK

Well this…but not for the reasons you might think.

My grr, is that with the guy being off his gourd and full of fertilizer….WHY does anyone still buy his machines?

They are super expensive considering the basic tech and actual build cost, because of the commercial model adopted (not built by him, but by Fracino, who also ship them),….while he spouts bile and nonsense from the other side of the planet.

he didn’t like LH review, which I thought was quite kind to the machine, went on a rant and later added me into it, especially as I don’t trash Londinium threads on HB (their mods would never let me do that)…just nuts, absolutely nuts? I believe he added me into it, because the ACS Evo, Vostok and Nurri are seriously affecting his business.

This negative effect is something he bought upon himself when one of his own associates at the time (who made a little bit of money from Londiniums), tried to destroy my online presence on another forum, which irked me a little. My constructive way of dealing with that was not to rant, but push ACS to finally make the Evo and help them on that journey (for absolutely free). He has only one person to blame and it’s not me…he should look to his good mate in the UK. Especially as I was at the time about to leave the online coffee world in 2019 and just carry on quietly at home….but the final trolling made me reconsider…what a good job I did!

I know I say always play the ball not the man….but in this case the man is not only the face of his company, but the owner, where your warranty resides and any help on his closed forum. God help any owners that get on the wrong side of him…

P.S. OK, In a way he is right I do get a benefit in kind, the sheer pleasure of helping ACS (for free) to produce a much superior machine, at a fair price. Of course I will get even more pleasure in future from now on.

Systemic

DavecUK I know I say always play the ball not the man

Ad hominem attacks show the author in a very bad light. Moreover, it shows that their argument is weak so they have to trash the author’s reputation.

Way back, on another forum, there was a cabal who routinely trashed DaveC’s reputation at every given opportunity - making the same snide untrue comments that Reiss parrotted on his blog above. They did their level best to have DaveC banned and were, briefly, successful until the forum owner saw sense lifted the ban and invited DaveC to become a moderator which enabled us to silence the cabal and turn around the forum.

For Reiss to parrott those self same snide untrue comments is revealing. He has done himself no favours and does not come out of this at all well. If he were man enough, he would apologise to DaveC. But in the echo chamber that is Londinium, I don’t think that will happen.

Systemic

DavecUK God help any owners that get on the wrong side of him…

Getting longer by the day.

Cuprajake

Yup

HarveyMushman

Cuprajake hes also very protected on home barista and why i ended up leaving there as you cant speak freely,

Same. I posted a bit there but witnessed some truly bizarre and what appeared to be overzealous ‘moderation’ (control) over the Mazzer Philos thread. Whatever happened to the First Amendment?

What was odd is that some criticism goes somewhat unchecked, yet criticism of other things results in threads getting locked.

I’m guessing it’s linked to sponsorship in some way.

One of the beauties of being an independent forum!

dfk41

The thing is, when Londinium first came to the market in 2012, their L1 was a good machine, compared to what was generally available. of course it had its own faults as I can testify. But, as time progressed more machines utilising the technology of the day came in to play. Londinium then realised that by following traditional espresso markets (meaning medium to medium dark beans) they were excluding themselves from what was becoming the ever so fashionable lighter roasted bean owner. The meant tweeks and the L1 model became the LR then the LR24 which finally through control of pre-infusion allowed lighter bean drinkers to come into the Londinium market. I believe Londinium cannot do very much else to the LR24, yet it is already very outdated.

To pursue the line @DavecUK started, Fracino are responsible for building and delivering the finished product. Londinium ‘rent’ factory production time. Londinium instruct Fracino they have sold a machine and a box bearing Londiniums name is sent out. The price that Fracino charge Londinium includes all their costs and profit. Londinium then add their profit margin. This makes no sense at all and is the reason that the price of an LR24, currently £3743.04 delivered in the UK. The technology in the LR24 is now outdated.

The thing I find odd about the Vectis, is the usual Londinium method of bringing something new to the market is to give one to their influencers, especially in the UK who plug the heck out of it in return for a free machine. I noticed that the early demo of the Vectis went to Holland and not to the usual UK contact. He received or started to publicise his machine on July 20th. The chat lasted 7 days and no posts have been made since July 27th. Back in the bad old days of CFUK the Londinium fanboys had a strong presence on the forum and they mined the hell out of it. Then as we know, CFUK was sold and from that was born our own Coffeetime with around 1100 members and is a vibrant forum, and Talk Coffee who have removed their stats from the home page, presumably in embarrassment and have plenty of days when no posts are made at all. This means how do Londinium influence sales in the UK now and possibly explains the lack of chat in the UK of the little Londinium machine. With the much higher than expected sales price of £1541.67, to which you add VAT then delivery makes it £1869.12. That is a lot of money however you look at it. This means that the US market becomes very important for the simple reason that they do not pay VAT although the do pay lower local sales tax.

It is a shame to see the very public meltdown that Reiss has had and is continuing to have. It is pathetic in the way he chooses to attack individuals making criticism very personal. I hope he grows up and in the process, grows a pair!

DavecUK

Oh I only just noticed this as well, another recent addition,, I obscured the customers name, so his real name isn’t repeated by our site.

I wonder how his customer feels about his real name being splashed out all over the internet, after posting on a forum about issues with his Vectis, under a forum name. That surely breaches data protection and any shred of moral code a company should have!

Gagaryn

DavecUK I wonder how his customer feels about his real name being splashed out all over the internet

Probably not a great idea to repost his name here then, that’s just making a bad situation worse.

Systemic Ad hominem attacks show the author in a very bad light. Moreover, it shows that their argument is weak so they have to trash the author’s reputation.

Agreed - disappointing that this thread retaliates by doing the same thing back.

DavecUK bullies don’t stop until you stand up to them and call it out….which is all I am doing.

Why not just stand up to them directly wherever these comments are hosted? They aren’t even here as far as I know, they certainly aren’t posting on this thread so it seems a strange to describe this thread as standing up to them.

dfk41 The point of the thread is to tell Reiss and his cronies that we will no longer sit and watch as they play vile games to which they are used to getting away with

As above - wrong place to do that - are “Reiss and his cronies” even on this forum? If you want to fight them on the beaches, go to the beaches. Get somebody to hold your coat while you deck him. This thread is more akin to going home and whinging.

DavecUK

I’m thinking of splitting this off into a separate thread titled. “Why you might not want to buy a Londinium”.

dfk41

DavecUK Makes sense. No need to adulterate another thread!

John_Yossarian

DavecUK “I’m thinking of splitting this off into a separate thread titled. “Why you might not want to buy a Londinium”.”
Now you are talking 😃

Systemic

Good idea Dave 👍

DavecUK

I split this off because it adulterates another thread and I thought it important enough to have it’s own thread.

It all kicked off when @lancehedrick produced a review of the Londinium Vectis which Reiss clearly didn’t like, although I thought it was very fair, in fact more than fair.

There was some comment on HB which started here and seemed to triggger Reiss Gunson. https://www.home-barista.com/levers/user-experience-londinium-vectis-t88435-180.html#p956925

https://www.home-barista.com/levers/londinium-vectis-spring-lever-lance-hedrick-review-t90220.html

The owner of Londiniums response was to throw his toys out of the pram and post this, which was amended a few times to eventually add me into it as well!

I think his behaviour is the antithesis of what we should expect from a company, even if it is a one man band with his machines built and delivered by another company, he has no factory full of employees to worry about, so the only person being damaged by this is himself (apart from those customers who has fallen out with him). When they do they are often excommunicated from the private Londinium (support) forum and I have had people tell me they were informed their self repair parts warranty was now invalid.

I have in the past removed a few negative posts about the Londinium machines/Service before most people would have seen them. I don’t think I can extend that courtesy to Reiss Gunson any longer. We are non commercial, have no advertisers and hence nothing to gain by protecting him any longer.

dfk41

Back in late 2012, I ordered a brand new L1 but the Luxe version. This came with glass side panels and a polished set of pipes and boiler that were covered in a see through material (like varnish but not varnish if you follow) to protect them. In those days there was a serious queue for machines as Fracino only had a small amount of line production per week. In early 2013, mine turned up and I could not have been happier. I had no experience with levers but loved the concept. After a couple of weeks use, it started to leak from every connection that carried water. What happened, was that the coated pipes and nuts could not be tightened enough at the factory, so they sent them out anyway. Reiss suggested wrapping the nuts with a cloth and trying to tighten. I was not happy with this solution and sent the machine back. It lay for a while and a compromise was reached. I would buy it back with the glass panels removed and normal steel ones fitted with all the nuts tightened.
A few months later, an L1 Luxe appeared for sale on the Londinium blog. A cafe in Edinburgh was buying the first Londinium 2 group and Reiss agreed to help promote the sale of their Luxe. I emailed him and asked if he would transfer the remaining warranty. I thought if their machine had been used in a cafe without issue, then it would work for me. He said, ‘absolutely’ so I made arrangements with the guys and bought it. I found out later that they had not used it in the cafe as it was under construction and had barely been used at all.
About a month later (my habit is to switch the machine on at 8 am and turn off around 4pm) I noticed that all the pipes that had been nice and shiny were turning pink. On closer inspection they were building up a deposit on them that you could scrape off in small pieces.I emailed Reiss between Christmas and the New Year to explain what had happened, for him to tell me the machine had no warranty. I pointed out that I had emailed him and asked for confirmation and he had said ‘absolutely’. He then claimed he thought I was trying to help a friend buy the machine and had he known that it was for me he would not have agreed to honour the warranty.
I could go on and on, but for some folks, this is a good example of Reiss turning nasty when it suits him, which contrasts with the ‘legendary’ customer service he offers some folks.

Gagaryn

I think this thread is a mistake.

My understanding is that this forum was created from a desire to move beyond the factionalism, name calling, toxicity and pettiness that existed elsewhere. Creating this thread doesn’t seem aligned with that aim.

You won’t change this individuals behaviour. The way I see it, there are two option; you can either leave him to it, and have the schadenfreude of watching him destroy his reputation and business, or you can respond in kind to his toxicity. Don’t take the bait.

dfk41

Gagaryn I agree with you, to a certain extent. The problems of the past are often referred to and a lot folks may well not be aware of the facts. Hence my support for leaving it.

DavecUK

Gagaryn He has been protected by that for too long and my online life made a misery by minions who worked for him and no doubt him in the background. CFUK used to be the "Londinium forum. I was told once, bullies don’t stop until you stand up to them and call it out….which is all I am doing.

He has mentioned me negatively online (with lies) before on more than one occasion and I said nothing….did it stop..no.

When I and 2 others were banned from CFUK did the Londinium mob stop…no, they came and crowed on the small forum I had and did their best to destroy that, before this one was created.

If Reiss wants to remove comments about me from that news rant and apologise, then I might remove this thread

Gagaryn

DavecUK bullies don’t stop until you stand up to them and call it out….which is all I am doing.

He has mentioned me negatively online (with lies) before on more than one occasion and I said nothing….did it stop..no.

You’d be better talking to him in private if you want to try to influence his behaviour. No good comes from publicly washing dirty linen - to mangle a metaphor, no pun intended! IMHO of course.

Systemic

DavecUK If Reiss wants to remove comments about me from that news rant and apologise, then I might remove this thread

Reiss is his own worst enemy. He can be very helpful to owners experiencing problems. Sadly, if he thinks you are being in anyway critical, you run a real risk of experiencing a very different response. As an ex-Londinium owner, I have seen both sides. Since Londinium forum went ‘members only’ with Reiss controlling who is allowed in and who isn’t, as was my experience despite being a Londinium owner, I am sure there are a lot of Londinium owners reluctant to speak out for fear of being refused assistance if and when something goes wrong. This way, Reiss has been able to control the narrative as Londinium is a closed church where dissent is heresy and non-believers are cast out into the dark.

Reiss’s ill-judged response to Hendrick’s review has brought him a mountain of negative publicity and is an own goal of ironic proportions. Hendrick will move on. The ones I feel sorry for are the Londinium owners who aren’t happy but daren’t say so.

Systemic

Gagaryn You’d be better talking to him in private if you want to try to influence his behaviour.

Rather difficult if you’ve been cancelled.

Over the years, Reiss has regularly trashed other manufacturers’ kit but cries foul if anyone raises the slightest criticism of Londinium no matter how valid. He is not averse to making claims about his products some of which are fanciful at best and downright misleading at worst.

DaveC had to endure years of trolling by a cabal who used every opportunity to accuse him of being paid for reviews either in kind or monetarily. Yet one of DaveC’s principal trollers had a relationship with Reiss where he got, gratis, the latest Londinium iteration over which, of course, he lavished much praise without disclosing he had received the machine free. So it is very revealing that Reiss chose to raise the pay to play troll in his rant at Hendrick’s review.

The old saying, ’if you can’t take it, don’t dish it’ springs to mind. Reiss might be advised to reflect on it.

dfk41

You cannot talk to people like that @Gargaryn. In my youth I did door security, back in the 80’s. You did not need to be licensed in those days. The first port of call was always to try and defuse a situation and try to talk. That is the correct thing to do but if someone attacks you, then you have to react in a different way. You react to what is in front of you using appropriate force. No one asked Reiss to publicly call out Dave, and not for the first time. The bad old days of CFUK saw some absolutely horrible behaviour by a certain bunch and they got away with murder. I doubt that you, or for that fact 99% of people are aware of what went on behind the scenes. This is not a knee jerk reaction by Dave. This has been a long time in coming.

Gagaryn

dfk41 You cannot talk to people like that @Gargaryn.

Yup - I agree, which is why I suggested he should simply be left to slowly destroy himself. The response was that he needs to be stood up to and called out. I disagree - I think what’s done is done, let it lie. But if there really is a burning desire to stand up to the bully - best done in private.

This thread won’t change anything and to think it will is daft - as the young folk say - the haters will still hate. It just becomes a big pile on. It’s pointless and ugly.

Nobody comes away looking good from a public slanging match - even those who know they are right! My opinion - you’ll have yours.

Anyway, you do you. I’m out. Pitchforks out, burn the witch. :-)