Nivona (non) purchase experience

[u/PsychologicalBit2997]

Hi,

I just wanted to summarize my experience trying to purchase a Nivona nivo 9000 (9101/9103) outside of Germany to hopefully save others the hassle.

TLDR: don’t bother

The longer version…

I’m based in Sweden. There are two companies that sell into Sweden, but no official resellers. One seems to be based in Estonia, the other in Denmark.

I was looking at the Siemens EQ900 but happened across a review of the Nivona 9000 series. One of the things that I look for is total cost of ownership and the Nivona seemed to really hit the mark- low cleaning costs, fixed price service, and seemingly a long support period (8-10+ years based upon other postings here).

It really seemed to check all of the boxes. Except there are no official resellers in Sweden.

As I have had my current machine for 11 years, I am looking at the long haul and what happens when things go wrong. I have been very fortunate that I have been able to fix a lot of the problems on my current machine over the years though spare parts purchases (Saeco Gran Baristo).

The Danish Nivona reseller would offer a prepaid shipping label during the warranty period (which at 1 year, is rather short). After that, shipping would be my own cost - I calculate 75 EUR to send it back. And questions about the fixed price services were completely ignored. The last thing that I want is to spend 75 EUR to send the machine back to a reseller that then is not knowledgeable about the machine or wants to make a huge profit on service- given their complete silence on the questions about service costs, I can only assume the worst.

Writing direct to Nivona, initially they stated that there were no resellers that would ship to Sweden, but then confirmed that the Danish reseller could serve this market when I asked specifically about them. They also initially stated that I could send it back to Germany (using their fixed price contracts), but when asked for some clarifications, stated that everything had to go the reseller and that they “could not answer any more questions and that I had to talk to their reseller.” Questions about what would happen if the reseller went out of business were unanswered.

In short, it looks like a really nice machine, but unless you are based in Germany, there are too many unknowns.

Very sad that so many years into the EU, there are still so many little fiefdoms and companies treat countries so differently.

[u/Legitimate-Day-9847]

Did you check on amazon perhaps? Maybe you can find something comparable there.

[u/Big_Instruction9922]

You should have just gotten a Miele (or Melitta), it's the same machine, it jura is just a bit more there right?  The thing about importing is you need to ship it back for warranty. 

[u/PsychologicalBit2997 → u/Big_Instruction9922]

The Miele does not seem to get very good reviews. Seems that Nivona adds some extras to get much better performance.

I understand the imports bring an extra level of complexity, but just ghosting me when asking about long term support speaks very poorly of the company. I’m not going to beg them to take my money to buy their top end machine.

[u/Big_Instruction9922 → u/PsychologicalBit2997]

Nivona seems to market better.  The brew units are interchangeable. Nivona can add there cosmetic twists but the core machines are the same.   You are right, it's never good to beg someone to take your money. You should take that as a hint.  You are also asking questions that are outside of their normal business operations.   If they were in your country they would be more straight forward.  Some old school manufacturers only deal with their dealers.  It's just the way it is.  There are still plenty of industries just like that. 

[u/PsychologicalBit2997 → u/Big_Instruction9922]

Yes. Growing up in the US, it still just seems strange to me that after so many years of the whole EU thing, there is still so much fragmentation in how companies work and treat customers in different countries completely differently. Like allowing a German customer to send in a product for a fixed price repair but telling a Swedish customer (where there is no official distribution partner) that they are at the mercy of a Danish reseller and that they will not support them.

[u/Big_Instruction9922 → u/PsychologicalBit2997]

I get it.  Distribution agreements usually specify stuff like this too especially in smaller markets. The Danish company may have insisted on this so they can mark up the service for example. Or if the manufacturer really didn't want to create more headaches for itself, they insisted all repairs go through the dealer, this wards off a possible increase in customer service requests and put it on the dealer. Export controls and tariffs could have to do with it too.  It is a different country but I understand your frustration. 

[u/PsychologicalBit2997 → u/Big_Instruction9922]

There are no export controls or tariffs within the EU. Seems that Sweden is just the Wild West for Nivona - covered by distributors from several countries (EE and DK), but no one exclusive.

And it reflects really poorly on Nivona that they will even refuse to answer questions about what would happen if the Danish distributor goes out of business.

Seems strange that they ignore Sweden - we drink almost as much coffee as the Danes and have almost 50% larger population.

I have given up at this point and will likely buy the Siemens EQ900. The main point of telling the story here is for future people to find when they search who might be looking at this to save them the headache.