Talk Coffee Blog — 2019-09-30

The grey import trap

Over the last couple of weeks we have been dealing with a bloke who received a wonderful present from his partner: a new espresso machine. The story goes that they purchased it over a year ago and used it once or twice, after which it went into storage until recently. It fired up but there were clearly some significant issues. All was not well. He contacted the mob he purchased from. They were supposedly in Sydney. He was in WA. He described the issues and asked for support, only to be told that the manufacturing company he purchased from will no longer do business with them and that he was on his own. A web search led him to a reseller of the machine in Perth, who were soon in contact with us as they had never seen this configuration of machine previously. Their techs chatted with ours and the short story is that it has crossed the Nullarbor and is now with us in the hope we can fix it. **On inspection, it's clear that our bloke has purchased an espresso machine from a company in Sydn