| Product: |
Brita Acclario |
| Date: |
08/09/05 (201 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Nice clean water - no limescale in kettle
Disadvantages: Takes a while to filter water, filters quite expensive
Living in Shropshire, we suffer dreadfully from hard water. I was finding I need to descale my old kettle on a weekly basis, otherwise I would get strange bits floating in my tea - urgggh!!!
Thereford when the Brita Acclario first hit the market - I immediately went out to buy one. It did everything it said it would do.
Firstly, you have to wash the filter to get rid of any air bubbles, and then you place the filter within the "hopper" in the top part of the kettle.
The kettle comes with one of two types of lid - a) the type you remove to fill or b) the type with a whole in the top for putting the water in. My kettle had type a.
You have to fill the top part of kettle with water, and allow it to drain through - you do this twice to ensure that the water is totally clear (something to do with the filter particles). Once you have done this, you can fill the kettle with water and away you go.
The kettle has a clever little switch on the side which stops the water filtering through to the bottom part of the kettle - which enables you to boil very small amounts of water in the bottom of the kettle and hold the unfiltered water in the top.
The water which has been filtered tastes so much better than water straight from the tap - and provided you remember to change the filter every month, the kettle stays limescale free!!! There is a little lcd mechanism on the top of the kettle which flashes when you need to change the filter, so you don't forget.
Anyway having happily used my Brita kettle for 2.5 years, the hopper unit (holding the filter) snapped. Allowing unfiltered water to get into the bottom of the kettle. Whilst the kettle still boiled water, unfiltered water meant that the kettle started to "fur up".
I decided that rather than just buy another kettle, I would email Brita to see if they could sell me a replacement hopper unit.
They emailed me back within 2 days to say that indeed they could supply me with the required part, and that I should call them with the model number of the kettle.
I therefore rang them with kettle in hand to give them the required information. The very nice lady on the phone advised me that the replacement part would be free !!! I had this kettle for over 2 years, so it was out of the guarantee period. I checked this with her again, but she confirmed that yes, Brita offered free parts replacements.
I therefore provided all the relevant information to her to enable her to check availability of the required part.
After a couple of minutes, she came back to me with the bad news that the part was out of stock - ahhhhhhh.
However her solution was unexpected. She would send me a brand new replacement kettle, totally FREE of charge, provided I returned the old kettle to her at the freepost address she gave me, once I received the new one.
Obviously this solution met very well with me!!! Within a week I had received my shiny brand new kettle (which was actually a superior model to the one I had originally purchased). I packed the old kettle in the box, and sent it back to Brita at the Freepost address.
Suffice to say my brand new kettle is working fantastically and I would have no hesitation in buying Brita in the future, and recommending them to everyone.
My only other point would be to say that I now only use Britas own brand of filters, as I believe it was by using cheaper "multifit" filters that my kettle broke in the first place by fracturing the plastic - as the fit of these alternative filters isn't perfect.
Summary: Excellent kettle, excellent customer service
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