A few years ago, my parents were
kind enough to get Daddy P and I a second hand dishwasher. It did well and
served us faithfully for five or six years until without warning one day it was
loaded and switched on and nothing happened. My cousin spoke to Daddy P over
Skype and they located the manufacturing date to see if spare parts could be
ordered for it and we discovered that dishwasher was 20 years old. No wonder it
had finally given up. Spares weren’t in vast supply (unsurprisingly!) and I was
resigned to washing up forever by hand, so I brought a pair of pink washing up
gloves, tuned the radio in and danced my way through hours of washing up on a
daily basis.
On Black Friday, on a whim, I
happened to look up dishwashers from several retailers who were having special
sale prices. Lots of them were still far too expensive, even with the Black
Friday discounts, but one from Curry’s caught my eye and with the discount it
was a very good deal even with delivery and installation on top.
On the website initially it
showed delivery available for next day, so I selected that. After the sale was
completed it said next day delivery was not possible as it was a 2 person
delivery / installation (I would have thought with a dishwasher that would flag
up anyway, before the delivery has already been chosen for next day and order
is completed?) I had a selection of alternative delivery dates – I wasn’t
fussed in the slightest so I clicked the first three showing available. I
received an automated email saying that I would receive confirmation of
delivery date by email soon. Nothing arrived.
I realised after ordering that I
had an appointment which I couldn’t avoid which conflicted with one of the
proposed delivery dates. I e-mailed customer services at Curry’s apologising
about that and asking them to ensure delivery did not happen that day, but
delivery any other day was fine. It took four days for a reply to arrive (after
the date of the confliction anyway) and at that point the customer service guy
advised that delivery was showing as booked for another date (obviously) but
then I was confused by the date he gave me, as it wasn’t a date I thought had
been optional when I’d made the order. It wasn’t an inconvenient date, but it
meant that delivery would not be for 11 days after I’d made the order, which I
felt was quite a long time. To date I have not received a reply back from the
customer care team at Curry’s following my response to their initial e-mail.
On Tuesday morning I received a text
message advising that my time slot for delivery was between 07:35 and 11:35. I
was up and dressed and trying to get J sorted out when I had a missed call from
a mobile number on my phone. When I rang back I was cut off, so I checked out
the front window and saw the Know How van parked outside, so I dashed down and
found one of the delivery guys on the doorstep. He was polite, wasn’t phased at
all by the fact that both dogs were going absolutely nuts howling, barking and
screaming. I put Holly in her cage in the kitchen and shut Buddy in the front
room with the gates, and we discussed whether it would be easier to bring the
dishwasher straight down the hallway through the house or come in down the
alleyway at the side and through the back gate into the utility room directly.
Due to the tight corner and the step, the delivery guys agreed straight through
the house was the best option.
I never like leaving people alone
in my house in that kind of situation. It makes me feel a bit weird. But what
option did I have, but to leave him removing the old dishwasher from the space
while I ran back upstairs to carry on sorting out J for school. A couple of
minutes later, there was another knock at the door – I went and opened it and
delivery man number 2 said hello. He came into the house and the first guy had
already got the old dishwasher disconnected and ready to go – the two of them
walked it through the house, and off to the van. Then the shiny new black one
came in – I had to rush back off upstairs – and finished getting J ready. I
heard the front door open and shut and saw delivery man number 2 was walking
down the path to the van with a load of packaging stuff. A couple of minutes
later I glanced out of the window again and he’d turned the van round ready to
go. Then the first guy called me from downstairs, and I went down and found him
ready to leave. He said he’d tested it and all was working fine, advised me to
read and follow set up guidelines (adding rinse aid and salt before first use
etc) and contact them if there were any issues. He asked if I had any
questions, confirmed they’d taken my old dishwasher and the packaging for the
new one and then he asked if it was OK to pet Buddy!
Now bear in mind, this bonkers
dog had been bouncing around the front room howling, barking and screaming from
the time the delivery truck had pulled into sight in the road outside, the
whole time this guy had been in the house and as we’d stood talking at the
front door, Buddy was separated from us by a baby gate so you could see him
leaping all over the sofas and circling the room as he continued his deafening
song. I looked at the delivery guy in disbelief. “Yeah, he’s fine to pet,” I
said quickly. Buddy immediately shut up with a good ear scratch. “I love dogs,”
The delivery guy said, “He’s a beauty.” I gathered my jaw up from the floor and
managed to smile at him. “I like him more when he’s shouting less,” I said.
J and I left for school two
minutes later, they’d already gone, no hanging around there! I was absolutely
amazed at how quickly they’d got it sorted – and the only thing that took the
two of them was bringing the new one into the house and taking the old one out,
the fitting etc was all done by one. In total, they arrived at 08:07 and they
left at 08:28. J and I were at school at normal time, and there was me worrying
about being late!
When I got home I had a cup of
tea before I started fiddling with the dishwasher, and I read the User Manual
like a good customer. Our old dishwasher I never learned how to do certain
things like putting the salt in and I feel that’s ridiculous as I’m sure it’s
fairly standard in any dishwasher, but having never done it before I didn’t
know. So I wanted to know about this dishwasher, and after reading the User
Manual I managed to follow the set up guidelines and get it all organised
within half an hour.
I’m not daft – I did read the
reviews before making the purchase – and one thing people had commented upon
was not having enough room for larger dinner plates on the bottom rack due to
the low position of the top rack. However I had also read that the top rack was
height adjustable in the info about the product on the advert. I risked it – my
dinner plates are huge. There was no way they would fit in the bottom rack with
the top rack on the lower position. The instructions for changing the height
aren’t exactly full and easy to understand but it provides enough information
for a person to work it would and adjust. I managed it! After putting the top
rack in the higher position there is just enough space for the arm to move
before the tops of my dinner plates. If my dinner plates fit, I can confidently
say that most would. You’d just need to adjust the top rack to do it.
I added the salt and the rinse
aid and followed the set up guide by putting water into the salt compartment to
run the dishwasher for the first time without any washing up in it. Another
comment I’d seen on reviews was that it was really loud. Since the dishwasher
lives in the utility room anyway, noise isn’t something that really bothers me.
If I’m in the front room watching TV or upstairs I can’t hear a dishwasher
running. I don’t know what volume these reviewers were expecting – especially as
it states on the product info the noise level produced – but while it’s not
silent, I would say it’s about average, not loud at all. When the cycle ends,
the dishwasher beeps a few times – this beep is loud, and was clearly heard by
me when I was upstairs in the front bedroom at the furthest point in the house
away from the location of the dishwasher. If this went off at night it would
probably disturb me, and the dogs, but probably not Daddy P or J unless they
weren’t properly asleep anyway. I don’t know if it beeps intermittently once it’s
finished until you open it, but as I heard it yesterday I came downstairs and
opened it. It does beep if it is turned on and the door is not properly shut
which is fine, until you’re loading things into it and it gets a bit annoying.
I turned off the power while I was loading it!
I like the additional wiring in
the racks to move around and make the best set up for what washing up you have –
it can provide flat spaces if needed, or angled ones as required. The cutlery
basket holes are a variety of shapes and sizes to try and accommodate a wide
range of cutlery styles but unfortunately my sharp knives (which I put in
handle-up) do not fit in there well as the handle is too large to fit in the
gaps and this leaves the knife off balance / top heavy.
Another one of the negatives
listed on the product reviews is that the bottom rack doesn’t stay out because
the dishwasher door doesn’t open completely flat. No, the dishwasher door doesn’t
lie completely flat, but it’s only a couple of degrees off it so the bottom
rack may not stay the whole way out but it doesn’t roll the whole way back in,
either – it moves in by an inch or two maybe. If you leave the top rack in, you
can access all of the bottom rack without needing to pull the rack out again.
Once you have some weight in the rack it stays more firmly in place though I
did find I needed to be careful to roll the rack back into the body of the
dishwasher properly as on one side the wheels pop off the runner easily.
The dishwasher has a delay cycle
facility you can set to delay it going on by 3, 6 or 9 hours – my mum uses this
function on her dishwasher for it to go on overnight, which I would do if the
dishwasher made so much noise I couldn’t cope with it being on while I was
downstairs, or if it was cheaper for me to run it overnight, but it doesn’t
affect me either way so I won’t worry about that, but it’s a nice added
feature. It offers Eco Mode, Intensive, Normal, 1Hr, Rapid and 3 in 1 wash cycles,
all of which you can select and then use the ½ load button if required.
By far my favourite addition on
the panel of buttons is the childlock option. You set the childlock on and
whatever buttons get pushed after that just get ignored by the dishwasher.
Since I’ve a four year old who LOVES fiddling with all things button related
(especially with flashing red lights and beeping going on) this is a big bonus
for me. It’s easy to set but I did find getting it right took a couple of
attempts – You have to press two buttons at once, one of those buttons being
the program selection, so I kept changing the program selection just before the
childlock activated and then having to undo the childlock to change the program
back! I need more co-ordination!
It did a washload yesterday and I
was pleased with how things came out, using the Eco Mode program and it was
quite full. The only thing was the deeper bottoms of some mugs still had water
in them where the angle wasn’t quite enough for the water to run off over the
depth of the lip. Not a massive deal really. Everything was clean and with the
exception of the bottoms of those mugs everything was rinsed.
All in all, so far I am pleased
with
this dishwasher. It was a very good price, though the customer care could
have been vastly improved with better contact, the text message was received
with my time slot being very accurate, the delivery guys were polite,
professional and quick, and so far the dishwasher has done what I want it to
do. The instructions could be clearer for adjusting the top rack but it’s quite
obvious once you think about it and for the cost in comparison to other
products I think this is a decent product of the quality you would expect for
an own-brand item vs brand name. You get various bits included – salt funnel,
scoops for detergent etc – probably stuff you get as standard with a new
dishwasher, but this is the first time I’ve had one from new!
Impressed with Curry’s product
and the pricing, less impressed with their so-called customer ‘care’. Impressed
with Know How’s delivery guys.
Good overall experience for me!
Love,
Mummy P
x x x x
