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Noisy no coffee come out

No coffee come out

While the rest of the world were queueing up for an iPhone 3G, I went and took our Krups fully automated espresso machine to Changi to get it fixed.

The receptionist was friendly and made small talk about coffee when she recognised me from less than a month ago when I took the thing in to be repaired. Then she got a “Chinese lady” to attend to me because “she’s the expert with all the coffee machines because today many coffee machine come in”.

The “Chinese Lady” came to the front desk, and asked what was wrong with our fully automated Krups, so I said, “it doesn’t work when you press the button for any of the preset coffees, and it makes a really loud noise and it doesn’t stop until you turn off the machine.“

She said, “Like this?” and started to mimic the noise a lawnmower makes when it goes over a mound of pebbles, turning the Malay Receptionist into a tudung-covered bunch of giggles.

“Oh, so you know that noise”, I said.

“But it’s normal for it to make that noise what”, she said.

“No, it’s not, it’s ten times louder than the grinding noise the machine makes when it’s grinding the coffee beans”, I said, “Plug it in an you’ll know what I mean”.

So she plugged the machine to an outlet and turned it on, and sure enough the lawnmower effect came on loud enough for the two other men sitting on the sofa in the reception waiting to send in their broken Rowenta vacuum cleaner to remark, “Wah, liddat make coffee one ah?”

So, the “Chinese Lady” laughed and shot a stern look at Malay Receptionist because she’s almost laughed the tudung off her head, and that really wouldn’t have been nice, and proceeded to type out a service request statement for me.

She took an age before finally deciding to type in all caps: NOISY NO COFFEE COME OUT.

I can’t wait till the Krups GOT COFFEE COME OUT, AND NOT SO NOISY ANY MORE.

Krups is krap

Krups is krap
The stickers with my name on them were put there by the service centre… I’m gonna be collecting them like WW2 aces did when they shot down enemy planes.

A year and a half ago, Naomi’s mother gave us this Krups fully automated espresso machine, and being espresso addicts, we were thrilled. We set the machine up in the dining area, read the manual carefully, bought our favourite beans, and enjoyed several cups of coffee before the damn thing broke down a week later, a week outside its warranty period.

To get a Krups machine repaired in Singapore, you have to take it yourself to their contracted service centre, run by a company called Richland Group Limited, whose website will tell you absolutely nothing about repairing coffee machines.

Some more, they’re located in a warehouse type building in Changi, so, bringing your machine there is a bitch unless you live in Changi. The first time I took our machine to be fixed, it cost about $80 including parts and GST, and the lady there told me that the machine would be under a month’s warranty after that.

Just under a year after that, our fully automated espresso machine’s LCD display read “Service 1” when I turned it on one morning. The manual said if the machine’s LCD display read “Service n”, to try unplugging the power, then plugging it back in and turning it back on. It didn’t work, so it was back to Changi, to Richland Group’s massive warehouse building, and to pay $80 including parts and GST to get it fixed.

The engineer attending to me said that an “O-Ring” needed to be replaced. So I just shrugged and paid and brought the machine home a week later to enjoy our espressos again.

It’s been 3 weeks, and yesterday morning, after the fully automated espresso machine had fully automatically ground a handful of arabica beans, it made this horrendous noise not unlike that which a lawn mower makes when you run it over a mound of pebbles, and it refused to stop making that noise until I unplugged the thing.

I’ve tried plugging it back and turning it back on, but it’s still running over that mound of pebbles.

I’m fed up, and wondering if anyone has the same problem with any fully automated espresso machine, and whether they’re from Krups, because at the Richland Group Limited’s service centre, the shelves are chock full of espresso machines that have been sent for servicing and repair.

Coffee & Espresso Machines - Small Domestic Appliances - Krups International
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