Revisiting a Blog post - Originally from March 2018
We're sad to state that the practice of "clickbaiting" remains alive and well. It's highly unethical in our opinion and it should be illegal. Sadly although the ACCC frown on it, they don't act on reports.
When a business also offers tax invoices "on request", you'd have to wonder as to the motivation of that practice as well...
Local examples listed at large discounts on regular street prices include brands such as Expobar, Macap, Niche, ECM, Brugnetti, Mazzer, Victoria Arduino and Mahlkonig - all listed as "out of stock" because supply has been refused by the importer.
What's really going on?
Statements like: "Grinder X competes with Grinder Y for low retention and single dosing and beats it for grind and build quality" lure gullible novices who might respond with words such as "Then I went back and looked at the website notes. They screamed at me 'You don't need that grinder, this one is all you need!!!' ...I became convinced. He was right!"
He was actually very wrong. He could have been supplied an identical base model of the same grinder for hundreds of dollars less and it would have delivered exactly the same results in the cup. You can't use a timer to effectively single dose.
Our opinion?
When you hard-sell something you can get over something you would like to sell but have been refused supply of, and then galvanise the sale with a bucket load of misinformation, easily-misled clients may well purchase on the basis of false claims.
We will never recommend that a timer grinder be used to weigh and then single dose. If you want to try that, buy the much cheaper manual version and play away.
The March 2018 post in its entirety...
We had a call last week from a very friendly bloke who wanted to come and visit and check out some gear.
He'd called a competitor about a particular espresso machine which he was keen to view. "Come visit", the guy said - and our bloke did.
On arrival, the espresso machine that our guy had asked about was nowhere to be seen. What occurred was a high-pressure hard-sell to purchase an alternate brand. We're glad to hear that the hard-sell didn't work on our guy, who said he was really irritated to have wasted his time driving out - for nothing.
Our guy and his lovely wife drove a whole heap further to visit us, tried the machines they were interested in and as our clients are often encouraged to do, went home to consider this large purchase.
Was there a happy ending? Yes, there was.
Our couple ended up replacing their old appliance espresso machine with a newer version of the same machine. It didn't work out for us, but that's okay - what is critical in this endeavour is that they obtained useful information, without the used-car-sales pressure. They considered their options and made the right decision. They purchased the right machine for their needs.
What did we gain? We gained the opportunity to speak with some lovely people, and two new members on our unpaid marketing team.
Good luck to our bloke, his partner and to that baby due any day now. We hope all goes well and have no doubt that new espresso machine is going to get one serious workout in the next few years!