Just bought a Sage The Barista Touch refurb from the Sage outlet for £375 on eBay using the 25% Black Friday code. Normal price £1100!
Be quick if you're interested as apparently the code won't be running for much longer (according to daughter #1 who works for eBay)
EDIT: ignore me, found it. BLACKFRIDAYSAGE.
How do you find the Sage outlet on eBay ??
Bollocks. I didn't know there was an outlet. Just bought a Bambino plus from Currys, shortly followed by a Smart Grinder Pro.
Code not working for me.
EDIT - it’s automatically applied but only on some items..
It's going for £356 with chilly5 at the checkout
I've too many coffee machines and why do you see so many sage stuff reconditioned, are they fragile ?
Pretty sure the Touch wasn’t highly thought of on here though. Can’t remember ?
Seems to get very good reviews generally.
Dunno.
Perhaps I’m mis remembering. It’s a good PSA and I’m tempted…
Top psa there, in case anyone wants a stovetop alessi are doing 25% off the pulcina 3 cup or 6, plus if you abandon your cart you generate an extra 10 the following day. Pulcinas are lush, i have both, make sure you choose the induction one though.
With CHILLY5 added as well there is a SAGE Oracle Touch for £552.18... 😮
I have an itchy trigger finger...
Excellent PSA, thanks. Oracle touch ordered for £569.99.
Bit more than the above but I'm not nit picking over it 🙂
I have been on the hunt for a Sage Dual Boiler as I bought a separate grinder a couple of months ago. Those Refurb'd Oracle Touch's tho are excellent value assuming the refurb has been properly done and it's just a bit of pre-use patina. Tempting....
The Touch is really good. I have the model below (Barista Pro) which has been excellent. I’d buy something similar if it broke. BIL has the Touch which I have used a fair bit.
The Touch is bigger and sturdier although I gather the internals are much the same. The actual touch screen is fine - unnecessary really but looks posh. The milk steamer is way more powerful and consistently gets better textured milk than I can ever achieve with the Pro. I imagine the criticism of the Touch is that the touchscreen is a bit of a gimmick and at RRP it’s expensive.
But at that price it’s a steal and I’d get one in a heartbeat if I needed a new machine.
I have a 5 year old barista pro with a very tired grinder (hence buying a separate one). I see both the Oracle's are versions of the dual boiler. I'd probably go with the non touch screen one as I'm not really a fan and quite like a bit of faff! Hopefully they'll have sold out before I finish dithering.
I like the idea of my old Barista Pro as a workshop coffee machine tho 🙂
Just had a Quick Look and we bought our Sage Oracle in Nov 2020. It cost us £1,300 then in a sale so actually one thing that hasn’t gone up stupidly since COVID
We had a Bambino before that. We have found our Sage machines faultless and give brilliant coffee. More than paid for itself not buying coffee from Costa etc.
However the Oracle we received first was faulty straight away. However Sage replaced it immediately with another one
Our friends who run a small campsite have one of the oracles - been back to JL twice both within a year. They just keeping getting replaced with new ones! First one had a leak, second one just stopped working completely. They don't get a massive amount of use so it does put me off a bit. I'm sure others have had zero issues tho.
My Barista Pro is 5 years old, has made at least two double espresso's most days, so that's at least 3500 shots and it's still - touch wood - making great coffee even if the grinder needed fixing. I have lately had a hankering for a flat white which is the only reason I'd probably bother with a dual boiler.
I wouldn’t buy another Dual Boiler. We had one, it had various fixes during warranty then died shortly after it ran out and there are no reliable repair centres so it worked out at about £200 / year for coffee which didn’t seem like a great deal to me.
I’d go for the bambino plus or a gaggia classic pro evo if I was going to again.
Oracle at £552 incoming. Let's hope it's worth it....
I noticed that some of the listings had quite a few bits missing - milk jug and all the cleaning tools etc so I picked one that had the least missing. Hopefully the description was accurate....
I am still hovering over the buy button. I bet you lot have them all by now 🙂
Surely ebay 'reconditioned' units these are just secondhand? Do they have a warranty?
I got the barista express from idoodirect and it came with 12 month warranty. Didn't have to use it as the machine works perfectly. Had some marks to the drip tray but apart from that was spot on and was their cheapest machine at ~£270.
I noticed that some of the listings had quite a few bits missing – milk jug and all the cleaning tools etc so I picked one that had the least missing. Hopefully the description was accurate….
I order one with the missing bits and it actually had all the bits, thats not guarantee that you will get the bits though. Mine had the two baskets and the puck tool thing.
Do they have a warranty?
These do, yes.
I just bought one of the Sage machines for my wife yesterday as it happens..... Its a Barista Express. Was £440 in BF sale. I know nothing about these, are they any good?
I did look at the reconditioned ebay ones but as it was a present I wanted a new one.
If you take the right approach and fiddle with the grind size to make sure the pressure dial is hitting roughly the right place and continue to do this, it makes a great cup of coffee. Takes a little while to get the milk right but I can get a half decent flat white out of mine now. Since I'm picking coffee that suits me, it's usually better than 80% of the coffee I'd buy from a coffee shop when out. There are a couple of places locally that get everything spot on and it's still a step above what I can do at home.
Depends how much of a coffee dweeb you are, I think the short coming of the Sage machines is that it does require some fiddling with the grind size to get a good coffee and some people have no interest in this.
Most of these refurb units in the IdooDirect store state they are missing quite a few of the originally supplied accessories according to the description.
just something to be aware of if skim reading.
Sage Oracle Touch is £524 today with the various codes. BLACKFRIDAYSAGE and QUICK8
Most of these refurb units in the IdooDirect store state they are missing quite a few of the originally supplied accessories according to the description.
Mine is arriving this morning so we'll see.
I should admit that I'm hoping for something good as my daughter had a word with the category manager and he said he'd make sure I got sent a good one as some are "literally new"!
@sharkbait - mind letting us know how to get a good word in with the category managers so I don't get a lemon? Seriously considering placing an order for a Barista Express at under £300!
mind letting us know how to get a good word in with the category managers so I don’t get a lemon?
Have a daughter who works at eBay?! 😉
I'm sure they're all good. Yuo can always send it back if you're not happy I guess.
LMAO - fair enough 😉
So my machine has arrived!
It's definitely been used before but in very good condition indeed.
Things it didn't come with:
Frothing jug*
Filter for the supplied water filter housing
Manual
Water hardness test strip
Single wall portafilter baskets for ground coffee (came with 2 x double wall baskets for whole beans).
Very well packaged indeed.
Initial thoughts coming from a [single button push] Delonghi Magnifica:
Much nicer looking
Very solid
Not as big as I thought it might be
A bit more involved for each brew .... obvs
Milk frothing is really fab
A lot of customisation - but this is good as you can [eventually] tailor your coffee to exactly what you want!
Happy 🙂
* I already had a stainless jug to use for milk but on the first go the machine didn't stop heating the milk. Afterwards I looked at the jug and the bottom is slightly concave so the machine's temperature sensor [which the jug sits on] wasn't making good contact so it didn't know when to stop.
The next time I moved the jug so that the outside edge was def on the sensor - this time the machine displayed the milk temperature going up and stopped right on cue.
I may buy a slightly smaller jug with a flat bottom.
I’ve had one of these in the basket so many times and talked myself out of it. Should really just get on and buy one
Single wall portafilter baskets for ground coffee (came with 2 x double wall baskets for whole beans).
/
The other way round no?
Just seen a new code BLACKFRIDAY20
Annoyingly I bought a machine about 10days ago…
Mine turned up today and it's definitely second hand and very well used. There was ground coffee all over it as the chute between the grinder and the outlet was completely blocked with ground coffee. Some of it had dislodged during transit and there was a large "plug" of ground coffee on the drip tray. I spent an hour cleaning it all and then discovered that the chute was completely blocked. I managed to clear it with a small brush. There is also some corrosion on the casing at the top where the water tank can be filled from and marks from where the portafilter has been bashed against the back while inserting it. It must have been used either in an office or commercial environment as it has a PAT test sticker on the bottom from May this year. It most definitely is not refurbished using my definition of the word...
It does work however - only made one coffee as a test using supermarket beans (they did have a roasted on date though) as my order hadn't arrived, and it was pretty good. It was a latte using the demo - flat white on the cards tomorrow. The grinder is very noisy....
I suspect all grinders are noisy.... My delinghi one definitely is.
Lofbergs Brazil if you want a good cheap supermarket kilo of beans, Morrisons for about £12
Nice crema and tastes pretty good for my flat white
I remember buying a returned John Lewis Samsung washing machine with a big discount, when it arrived it was obvious it had been used a good few times due to the soap scum around the seal, asked them to take it back but got another £150 off and the 5 year guarantee from the day I bought it
I'd be thinking of sending that well used machine back , you would expect them to clean it out before sending it off at that price
@oceanskipper – I'd have been returning that – as you say, it's anything but refurbished :O
The grinder is very noisy….
I’d dismantle/remove the top burr and check it and the fixed burr in the machine for damage and give it a good clean through as the grinders in these are prone to clogging (as you’ve found). I’d also remove the shower screen and soak in cleaning solution or use espresso cleaning tablets (check Amazon)
You may be able to check in the settings to see how many espressos it has made in its life.
They do make decent espresso once set up correctly though so don’t be discouraged
Ive given it a thorough clean and it's in a far better condition now than it was when it arrived with me. I've cleaned the burrs - top one out and washed, bottom one brushed and de-clogged. I've also cleaned the portafilter and group head screen by back flushing as per the instructions.
I'd be interested to see how many espressos it has made but there's no info in the standard settings page - there might be an engineers mode or something but no mention of it in the manual...
EDIT - found the service menu. 1780 coffees made.
EDIT – found the service menu. 1780 coffees made.
That's nothing, my sage duo temp is around 13000 without issue
Don't get the love for Sage stuff.
It's expensive junk. I'm on my 3rd machine and 4th repair. That said the warranty has been maxed out. Fair play there.
The consistency of my oracle is appalling. Dose is all over the shop.
Separate grinder has made a better job of it all though but I'd have just bought a decent simple espresso machine had I known better at the time.
Having said all that I got the itch with that new Jet machine.
