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Appliances

Bought another Beko; this is becoming a habit!

It’s me again. It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?

I’m continuing my Beko habit.

The last time I wrote about Beko was when the tumble dryer stopped working and we needed a new one (Read: “The business of buying a tumble dryer“). We’d made an impulse purchase, a few years ago, of a ‘cheap’ Beko and that gave us almost three years of service before something stopped working. Should I bother getting a repairman out or just buy a new one? I bought a new one.

That new tumble dryer is continuing to work fine. I am hopeful that I’ll continue to get some good service from it. We’ve had it for 6 months now. I hope that writing that won’t then mean I’ll get a call from my wife to tell me it’s broken next week.

Anyway: We needed a new Freezer.

A family member gave us a new freestanding ‘tall’ freezer, about a year ago. It was years old. The model number didn’t even show up on the Beko website. But it was useful. We sat it in the garage and used it to store all the Donald Russell meat, bread and whatnot that we didn’t need in the main kitchen fridge/freezer.

We became used to the concept of a backup storage freezer.

And then it broke.

I tried changing the fuse. No dice.

I tried changing plug sockets. Nothing.

And that was me. That was it. This is the consumerist world in which we live in. It is uneconomical for me — I presumed — to go and find someone to fix it on my behalf. I didn’t even bother getting someone ‘out’ to try and fix it. Not after the various experiences I’ve had in the past whereby the whole process is tipped in favour of the supplier and where £49.99 call out fees seem nice and reasonable until the guy spends hours messing around (at £45/hour) trying to get something working to ‘save me the money’. Blah blah.

Oh I also thought about insurance. But we were given the freezer. No proof of purchase. And besides, the excess fees… ah dear. Useful if you have to replace an engagement ring, but not a cheap freezer.

So on to ao.com, I went.

Screenshot 2015-02-18 23.35.22I looked up Beko Freezer and found this one. It’s almost exactly the same as the old model in terms of dimensions. The old one is grey. This one is white. I think that’s the only key difference (apart from the years of age). Same amount of drawers, indeed the dimensions look almost exactly the same.

I thought for a few moments and hit the buy button. The AO process is so flipping smooth. I paid £14 for them to recycle the old freezer. I also paid an extra £9 for next day delivery.

And that was it.

Just like Amazon. The freezer arrived. I took it out of the box, briefly perused the manual, plugged it in, left it overnight and boom, it was freezing the next morning and ready to rock. I had so much confidence in the AO logistics system, I ordered a job lot of Donald Russell meat to arrive the following day and now the new freezer is fully stocked.

It’s not necessarily anything to look at. But at £245 (plus delivery and recycle fee) — I am content.

I am still bothered by the fact it is not a brand. It’s not a Miele.

I looked up the Miele upright freezer and at £1,438, it appears to be the most expensive you can buy from AO.com. That is just about 6 times the cost of the Beko. SIX times (5.869 times, to be exact). The Miele looks a bit sexier inside. It’s a bit taller, too.

Am I missing anything in terms of quality? I don’t know.

I am currently content, though. Good job Beko.

I’ll update you if there’s a failure.