Product Description

Gaggia Titanium E Plus 74870Fully automatic bean to cup machine With E Plus system for brewing control Cappuccinotore as standard extra 15 bar pump pressure 2.4 ltr removable water tank LCD display Coffee grinder capacity 250g Hot water and steam output R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151851 in Kitchen & Housewares
• Brand: Gaggia
• Model: 74870

Features

• All of our products are brand new and come with a full Manufacturers warranty

Manufacturer's Description
Gaggia is the best known Italian manufacturer of coffee machines for professional and household use and its name is synonymous with tradition and reliability the world over. The company was set up in 1947 by Achille Gaggia, the man to whom we are indebted for the success of espresso coffee all over the world. It was he who on September 5th 1938 filed a patent no 365726 with which modern steam-free coffee machines may be said to have been born. In 1977 Gaggia began producing coffee machines for the home, launching the Baby Gaggia, which to this day is considered to be the ideal family coffee maker. The designs and technological advances have changed the way the machines look and work but the objective of quality, reliability and the passion for the right espresso everytime has remained throughout gaggia's history and this is what makes Gaggia legendary.

Fully automatic functions with LCD programmable control panel, the brewing unit is removeable for easy cleaning and descaling can be set at standard or automatic. The coffee quantity can be adjusted in addition to the grind setting. There is a twin boiler so you can make coffee and froth milk at the same time. The E plus system allows for controlled brewing.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Whatever you do, DON'T buy this machine!
Six months ago, I bought the Gaggia Titanium machine from my local Fenwick store (I know the machine shown here is the Titanium Plus, but there is virtually no difference between them).

It cost me £600 and proved to be the worst purchase I have ever made.

When I first set up the machine, it made exactly 3 cups of coffee before a 'ventilate' message appeared in the LCD display and the machine stopped working completely. I phoned the Gaggia Helpline for advice. They told me to descale it, even though it was brand-new! Then they said they didn't actually know what was wrong with it and to contact the shop.

Fenwick replaced the machine the same day. The next machine lasted 8 weeks before exactly the same thing happened again. And again, Gaggia Helpline could not say what was wrong with it, except for weakly suggesting there might be an 'airlock' in the machine, but they did not seem to know how to fix this.

Fenwick replaced the machine again. This machine lasted almost 3 months and, to be fair, it did make very good coffee. But then every time the steam/hot water pipe was used, boiling water began to run down the inside of the machine and out of the drip-tray instead of out of the pipe. Gradually, no water came out of the steam pipe at all; it just poured down inside the machine, accompanied by an alarming hissing and roaring noise. We called the Gaggia Helpline. They told us to descale the machine, so we tried that without any success. Then they said there must be a blockage in one of the internal pipes and told us to do a full rinse cycle and then leave the steam pipe running for a few minutes to see if that would clear it. We did the rinse cycle as instructed, then opened the steam pipe. After a few minutes of hissing and bubbling the machine emitted an enormous burst of steam and boiling water from inside which scalded my husband's hands, as he was standing next to it when this happened. Then the 'ventilate' message appeared again and the machine stopped working. We phoned Gaggia again and I explained what had happened. Their only response when I said it had scalded my husband's hands was "Oh right. Sorry". They said they thought there "might be an internal problem" with the machine (oh wow - glad the geniuses at Gaggia came up with that idea as we'd never have thought of it ourselves...) and recommended we contact the shop again. Fenwick then insisted the machine had to be sent back to Gaggia for repair or replacement. We were told this would take two weeks. After three weeks with no word we rang Gaggia, who said the machine had been dispatched back to us the day before. However, over another week passed before it arrived back. Gaggia had in fact replaced the machine and stated on their report that this was because of 'postal damage' sustained by the original machine. Hard to believe, since it was boxed up securely in the original packaging and sent via Gaggia's own choice of courier...

The fourth machine lasted 3 weeks before doing exactly the same thing as the machines above. This time, I took the machine back to Fenwick and asked for a full refund, as I had had enough. Fenwick tried to insist it was sent back to Gaggia for repair or replacement again, but I refused under the terms of the Sale of Goods Act (loss of faith because the goods are not of satisfactory quality and not durable, therefore it is the consumer's right to refuse any further attempts to repair/replace). At this, they finally gave in and issued a refund. They also admitted that several other customers had had problems with this machine.

Having read a number of customer reviews on the net - not just on Amazon but elsewhere - it seems many people have experienced exactly the same problems with the Titanium range as we did (and the same total lack of helpfulness and honesty from Gaggia). It would seem that this model has an inherent design fault which Gaggia are not willing to acknowledge.

It is also alarming that there is only a one-year warranty on the machine (most other manufacturers offer two years). So although it didn't cost me anything to replace/repair the machine over and over because it was within the warranty period, if it was over a year old when this happened I would have to pay the shipping and repair costs myself every time it was sent back. And given how often it broke down to start with, I would absolutely expect to be sending it back regularly!

I wouldn't have been so annoyed or surprised if I had just bought a basic plastic coffee-maker for £30, say, and it had subsequently broken down, as I might reasonably expect such a cheap item not to be very robust. You get what you pay for, after all.

But that's exactly the point: you are supposed to get what you pay for, and the Titanium is described as Gaggia's top of the range, state of the art home coffee machine and it carries a correspondingly (very) high price tag to match. As such, I would certainly not expect it to be so weak and flawed that it is incapable of running for more than a few weeks without breaking down. That is just ridiculous.

I would therefore strongly recommend anyone thinking of getting this machine to look elsewhere. Try a Jura or Delonghi bean-to-cup machine instead. Anything but a Gaggia!

Excellent at first but now not so great
D J Emanual's bean feeding problem seems to be a result of an 'improved' bean hopper/grinder. I have had a Titanium for over three years and it has been excellent, an easy five stars. However, I began to get leaks within the machine and took it (I'm not far away) to Gaggia to be serviced. This is a flat rate, replacing anything that's wrong, service. When I got it back they had replaced the original 'hole' where the beans usually slid effortlessly into the grinder with a system capped by a conical plastic shape. I now only get a couple of cups of coffee before it claims the beans are gone, as described above. They've offered to change a further part for me after Xmas so I will be asking for the cone to go as well!

design flaws exist and problems soon became evident
The coffee that it makes is great, both espresso and cappuccino, and I cannot fault it in this respect. The automation from rinsing the machinery, grinding the beans and grinding a prescribed quantity of coffee through to making the coffee and emptying the used ground coffee in to a waste compartment is very convenient: particularly since all of this happens at the touch of a single button.

However, after having the machine for three months and giving it very light use (no more than an average of two cups of coffee a day) the machine completely stopped working, refusing to pump hot water through the ground coffee. As a result it has been sent back to Gaggia under warranty which is less than satisfactory given that this is the flagship domestic machine costing almost £700!

Also there is a design flaw relating to the coffee grinder. Most coffee grinders are conical funnel shaped so that the beans fall into the grinder under the forces of gravity. However, in order to incorporate the grinder into the Gaggia Titanium, the designers have created an odd flat shaped coffee bean compartment which does not benefit from the gravity pull to feed the beans through the grinder. As a result, the machine often displays "coffee beans empty" when the grinder is more than 50% full. The problem is that the machine has pulled the beans from the center of the grinder and has no way of pulling the beans from around the edge of the flat grinder into the void in the center. The only solution is to either keep it 100% full all of the time or to open the grinder and push the beans into the center using ones hand (which is bizarre given that the machine is intended to be completely automated).