Quality product but appalling manual - excellent support from Currys (Panasonic NN-A554W)

Member Name: Skoda119

Product:	Panasonic NN-A554W
Date:	08/09/08 (617 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Efficient "Inverter" and "Chaos defrost" technology

Disadvantages: Insufficient stage by stage panel advice on oven and poor manual

Four models are covered by the single manual for this product. The base model is the NN A554 with white enamel finish, NN A524, NN-A574 and the NN A514 the premium aluminium stainless steel finish.

Having had good and long service from two previous Panasonic microwaves we opted for the A514 top of the range model. Sadly it deviated from the long standing procedures of entering power level or autoweight program and then entering weight. The 112 page manual does not set out alternative procedures clearly and what is needed is a simple step by step pull out card/s for each of the combined, convection, grill or microwave operations.

Contacted Panasonic about not being able to enter weight on some of the autoweight programmes. After going through a check list of what we had done they said return product to Currys.

Currys, to their credit, offered return of money or replacement product without question and even put us in touch again with Panasonic from their phone.

From Curry's phone Panasonic assured us that end of one year guarantee did not mean end of their support and they would still cover inherent defects or certain key parts (Sale of Goods Act requirement on retailer?)

Decided to take replacement Panasonic but pay for Curry's five year extended warranty.

However a problem we encountered on the replacement oven in cooking a pizza by convection oven shows that simplicity and consistency have not been a primary marketing consideration.

OK the adviser at Panasonic Customer support should have known that for some of the autoweight cook programmes it is not possible to enter the weight until the preheating stage has been completed. This is not explained on page 42 but if you persevere to page 46 there is an explanation!!!! Maybe we need not have returned the first oven to Currys.

Once we had mastered that the start button for the convection oven also set the temperature. Although on page 32 it states that "The oven starts at 150C" (presumably a default setting) this is followed by a bold boxed statement "The oven will automatically work on HIGH Microwave Power if a cooking time is entered without the oven temperature previously being selected"

Well it seemed to us that you could not enter a cooking time until the oven had finished preheating to the starting temperature.

The engineering and quality seem to be what is expected from Panasonic but the manual is awful and you might damage the product if you fail to understand or implement the instructions properly.

This microwave seems very efficient and perhaps this is linked to the "inverter" and "chaos defrost" technology.

Panasonic get your finger out and improve the instructions or provide more detailed stage by stage instructions on the computer screen. You should not need to have a 112 page manual by the microwave at all times!!!!

Summary: Only persevering with product due to brand loyalty.

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