This might be filed under a first world problem but was somewhat traumatic to me.
Earlier this week... I get up and walk to my LM GS3 and start making the morning coffee. The shots look and smell awesome so I am thinking this is going to be a good coffee day. Then I grab a small pitcher and pour in some milk and prepare to start steaming. I activate the steam and nothing happens. I am thinking ***? Then I notice the steam boiler pressure is 0 bar. It took me awhile to process this clue.. but it was looking like everyone in the house was doing straight shots today...
The machine is clearly not happy so I turn it off and go to work. By lunchtime I am beginning to get bummed about the prospect of no coffee the next day. So I take a crazy chance and call LaMarzocco US and press the numbers to to get to tech support. I went thought the normal useless diagnostic questions until I was asked if I had a multi meter and knew how to use it. My other hobby is building tube base hi-fi gear so I was able to say... uh ya... she gave me a handful of diagnostic test to do. When I got home from work I did the test and I had bupkis and things were not indicating where the fault was. I noted I had another hour before support closed so I called them again. I retold the story of the symptoms and what I had done. We stated measuring voltages and resistances of various components when suddenly the steam boiler started heating again.
I am super happy with La Marzocco at the moment. Yes the machines are expensive but consider that I bought my machine a long time ago and was way out of warranty. They would be happy to sell me a expensive spare parts but worked though the trouble shooting and they got me up and running for zero dollars to them.
I let the steam boiler heat up and confirmed voltages and that the PID and various circuits seemed to be working. I feel kind of weird when "fixing" something is nothing more than I was trouble shooting and then it starts working.
Over the years I have had many different brands of espresso machines but this is the first time the way out of warranty support was great and got me going again.
for the TL;DR crowd - LaMarzocco GS3 that was way out of warranty had a problem and LM USA helped get me going over the phone. I am super happy and am reconsidering if I want to upgrade to a slayer or some other high end personal espresso machine.
Ruckin - drinking great coffee again
Earlier this week... I get up and walk to my LM GS3 and start making the morning coffee. The shots look and smell awesome so I am thinking this is going to be a good coffee day. Then I grab a small pitcher and pour in some milk and prepare to start steaming. I activate the steam and nothing happens. I am thinking ***? Then I notice the steam boiler pressure is 0 bar. It took me awhile to process this clue.. but it was looking like everyone in the house was doing straight shots today...
The machine is clearly not happy so I turn it off and go to work. By lunchtime I am beginning to get bummed about the prospect of no coffee the next day. So I take a crazy chance and call LaMarzocco US and press the numbers to to get to tech support. I went thought the normal useless diagnostic questions until I was asked if I had a multi meter and knew how to use it. My other hobby is building tube base hi-fi gear so I was able to say... uh ya... she gave me a handful of diagnostic test to do. When I got home from work I did the test and I had bupkis and things were not indicating where the fault was. I noted I had another hour before support closed so I called them again. I retold the story of the symptoms and what I had done. We stated measuring voltages and resistances of various components when suddenly the steam boiler started heating again.
I am super happy with La Marzocco at the moment. Yes the machines are expensive but consider that I bought my machine a long time ago and was way out of warranty. They would be happy to sell me a expensive spare parts but worked though the trouble shooting and they got me up and running for zero dollars to them.
I let the steam boiler heat up and confirmed voltages and that the PID and various circuits seemed to be working. I feel kind of weird when "fixing" something is nothing more than I was trouble shooting and then it starts working.
Over the years I have had many different brands of espresso machines but this is the first time the way out of warranty support was great and got me going again.
for the TL;DR crowd - LaMarzocco GS3 that was way out of warranty had a problem and LM USA helped get me going over the phone. I am super happy and am reconsidering if I want to upgrade to a slayer or some other high end personal espresso machine.
Ruckin - drinking great coffee again
