Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Baratza Preciso

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by deegee View Post
    Thanks for the advice. I have ordered a couple direct from Baratza USA.

    It's a real anomaly, this grinder, it has some very good points that I really like, but it is let down badly by a few flimsy parts, and a local agent who doesn't seem to give a sh!t about customer service once they have made a sale.

    Probably an example of what happens when someone has a monopoly on a product like five senses have with Barartza's.

    There's a couple of things I want to say, just for balance.

    Without going into specifics, they looked after me and I feel that their (5Senses) failing lies with communication, rather than customer service/focus as a whole.

    These days, people expect an email response (even just an acknowledgement) within 24hrs, which I feel is fair but some businesses don't seem to grasp the importance of it. I sent them a tracking number; no response. package received, no ackowlegement, two days later I phone them and am immediately put through to the guy I need to speak to who informs me that they've already acted on it.

    The problem is that these days you can't just trust a company to handle it, so unless I'm getting the updates (even if it's a one-sentence email) I'm assuming that it's not being handled.

    As far as the Preciso goes, I'm going to make a bunch of educated guesses here and say that they might be roasters, first and foremost, who offer equipment that they feel does their primary product justice at whatever pricepoint and have decided to drop in Baratza's gear so that people who don't want to drop 900 bucks on a Mazzer have an option that will make fantastic coffee.

    And the Preciso does contribute to amazing coffee; if mine hadn't kept breaking I would have kept it forever (I say this having moved to a K-6 and gotten better results with the Preciso, with f-all grind retention and a tiny footprint). Unfortunately IME they break, often.

    If Baratza stregthened the required parts and chucked an extra hundred bucks on the RRP I think they'd do themselves a favour; at the moment I get the impression that they're innovating at the cost of sorting their models completely and expecting their consumers to be the beta-testers/fixers.

    As a retailer, carrying such a machine must be a total PITA, and given how great they can be I hope that Five Senses keep carrying them because with a few spares and some know-how they probably represent the best ergos/performancerice option around.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Talk_Coffee View Post
      Yes and no.There are plenty of importers who are customer focussed. Some sadly are not.....
      My mistake, I should have said this is what sometimes happens when an importer has a monopoly. Certainly seems to be the case here.
      I have sent 5-senses three messages, the first ten days ago, and have not even had an acknowledgement that they were received, and this is very frustrating.

      As I understand it, their pricing effectively denies wholesale to anyone who might want to retail Baratza's in Oz, so they can get away with lousy customer service because they are the only game in town. At least they can in the short term, but sooner or later it should catch up with them. If they don't get their act together, posts here and on other forums will mount up and it will cost them sales.

      Comment


      • I agree with what Dragunov said in his post above - especially re the lack of communication from 5-Senses. This is not the first time I have had an issue with them. When I first got my Preciso, I contacted them because I had to set the adjustments almost at the lowest setting to grind for espresso. I didn't try to grind Decaf, but I'm pretty sure that I would not have been able to set it fine enough.

        It took a few days, but that time I did get a reply, saying that if it got worse & would not grind fine enough I could send it back under warranty, and offering me a discount voucher on other purchases from their shop, which I declined..

        I later found on Baratza's website, that there is an adjustment under the cover, which will make a Preciso grind finer. Why the hell did they not tell me this ????. Are they so unfamiliar with their own product that they didn't know about it, or did they just not care enough to point me to it ???. Either way they are hopeless, and dealing with them is an exercise in frustration.

        I also agree with him about the grinder, it is compact, grinds well (when properly set) and has minimal grind retention, but on the downside some of the plastic parts are weak, the portafilter holder accessory is useless, and it needs to be cleaned frequently or it clogs. It is noisy, and the timer knob keeps falling off.

        With a few minor design changes and an agent who actually cared about customer satisfaction, this could be a great little grinder, but at the moment it is just not worth the hassles.

        Comment


        • Interesting... I never had a clogging issue myself. A shaving brush makes cleaning a twenty second job (brush burr into sink, turn grinder upside down over sink and brush out chamber).

          Totally agree on the pf holder (I grind into a jug anyway) and I'm glad it's not just my timer knob that continually escapes.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by deegee View Post
            I also agree with him about the grinder, it is compact, grinds well (when properly set) and has minimal grind retention, but on the downside some of the plastic parts are weak, the portafilter holder accessory is useless, and it needs to be cleaned frequently or it clogs. It is noisy, and the timer knob keeps falling off.

            With a few minor design changes and an agent who actually cared about customer satisfaction, this could be a great little grinder, but at the moment it is just not worth the hassles.
            Never had an issue with the PF holder. I grind directly in to the Rancilio Silvia PF and can do so hands free. Never had it clog up. Timer knob fell off a few times but since I never use it I put that in the drawer with the Silvia single cup basket, never to be seen again.

            I shove the brush that came with the grinder up the shoot after use to dislodge any coffee sitting there.

            Is a clogging issue a sign your beans are quite oily or you are grinding extremely fine?

            Comment


            • Can be.

              Ten characters.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by DrSmurto View Post
                Never had an issue with the PF holder. I grind directly in to the Rancilio Silvia PF and can do so hands free. Never had it clog up. Timer knob fell off a few times but since I never use it I put that in the drawer with the Silvia single cup basket, never to be seen again.I shove the brush that came with the grinder up the shoot after use to dislodge any coffee sitting there. Is a clogging issue a sign your beans are quite oily or you are grinding extremely fine?
                I use the timer switch every time. The press button on the front is so stiff the machine falls over backwards before it operates. I'm trying to picture how you grind hands free without the timer, but have come up blank, or with images well not suited to family viewing 8-).

                My Gaggia P/F fits in the slot, but the grinds all pile up right at the back, and overflow into the outer housing so I might as well grind into the container and pour into the P/F.

                It's not the chute that clogs up on mine. If it is not cleaned every few days the grinds build up around the bottom of the upper burr and become compacted there, restricting the flow into the sweeper chamber. As Dragunov has said, it is a simple job, and doesn't take long, but has to be done regularly and often.

                I may be grinding a little finer than most. I have set the OPV to 9 bar and tamp fairly lightly due to an old hand/wrist injury that has come back to haunt me. Some of my beans probably have been a bit oilier lately too, because I have been experimenting with slightly darker roasts, but if that's the cause, then it is just another point of dissatisfaction. My much maligned EM0480 is grinding Decaf finer and oilier but doesn't need stripping as often

                Comment


                • See post #86, I found the portafilter holder worked Ok , using an OE dosing funnel I get no mess.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Cadan View Post
                    See post #86, I found the portafilter holder worked Ok , using an OE dosing funnel I get no mess.
                    Unfortunately I don't have an OE funnel, and since one was not included in the box, and 5-S won't even reply to my emails, much less supply me with the necessary funnel, I still have to say that as it comes out of the box it is just like the suppliers --- totally (beer barrel) useless.

                    It actually works better if you throw away the metal fork, grind into the container, then tip the grinds into the P/F. But if you're going to do that, you might as well use the standard container that comes with the unit.

                    If you buy it as an accessory it costs about $20 so I would rather they had left it out and charged less.
                    Last edited by deegee; 10 October 2013, 05:14 PM.

                    Comment


                    • I've had a Preciso for about 15 months. It's been very good. However, in the last couple of weeks, I've been having to adjust the grinder finer and finer to get a good result in the pf. On Sunday I decided to pull it all apart and take a look. The white plastic ring that carries the upper burr was shattered in a couple of places. I don't know if I did it whilst adjusting or what. I'm usually pretty careful.

                      Anyway, I immediately put an e-mail trough to Five Senses. Late Monday I hadn't heard anything, so I called, explained the situation and how I expected to have received a reply and they said they would pass on the message to the appropriate person. Late Tuesday I still hadn't got a reply so I repeated Monday's exercise. Late Tuesday evening I got a SMS to contact a particular person the following day (yesterday). I duly did so, said the service wasn't great, they apologised, and they put the rings (I bought two, $2.50ea) in the mail. They arrived today.

                      So, in a nutshell:
                      - The grinder failed, probably from the components being too light duty
                      - The service I got from Five Senses was initially bad, but they redeemed themselves
                      - The grinder is back in service, working like nothing had happened.
                      - I'll probably forget about it in a week, and never have to use my spare ring.

                      Gonzo

                      Comment


                      • Don't lose that spare burr holder Gonzo, I went through three of them in two years. To be fair, one of them broke when I dropped it, but two broke without any help from me.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by gonzob View Post
                          -snip-
                          This sounds pretty familiar. At least they're able to ship out rings now rather than the whole upper burr...

                          I'm so torn about the Precisos; maybe I'm way off the mark, but I feel like if they chucked an extra $50 into is they could make it a legitly excellent entry-level machine. As it stands they're very fragile items.

                          Comment

                          Working...
                          X