Sage coffee repairers- recommendations?

Disaster has struck! Our 5 year old Barista Pro no longer heats water for pulling a shot or the hot water setting. Happened post a recommended ‘flush’ which might be a co-incidence. The steam wand still works but it took a while before any steam came out. In desperation I descaled and reset the machine to defaults, but its defo still broken. Lukewarm water at best.

Probably the thermo-jet based on some web research. Could be the thermal cutout, but having taken it apart once before, I’m not doing it again. Hence the question..

Seem to be a few repairers out there, some come to your house (preferred), one in Bristol I could potentially drop it off otherwise it’s the faff of shipping it. I’m hoping it’s a simple fix, but I’ll get them to ‘service’ it as well as it’s not had an easy life!

So far I’ve been looking at fixmycoffee machine, repair/reuse and coffeeclasics (which gets a bit of a slating on trust pilot). Any recommendations appreciated especially for a speedy repair. Looks like the old stovetop is going to get pressed into service as a stop gap 🙁

Can’t help but me little sage hasn’t been right since I did the recommended flush. Still works, in that I can make a coffee, but not as it did before.

Coffee classics came out and did mine.

They’re the official ones I believe.

Chap was good and knew exactly what to do. Was under warranty though but would have cost £300.

He came to my house which is great as sending the oracle away (which I’ve done twice) should be an official Krypton Factor challenge.

Sage machines aren’t built particularly very well.

The general consensus is that they’re cheap to make, do a good job, but aren’t very serviceable.

Thanks. I’ll have a ring round.

When we took the machine apart, I didn’t think it was that badly built. Maybe my expectations were low! If it costs less than half of a new one to fix and lasts another five years, I’ll be happy with that.

It’s not that they’re badly built as such, just hard to get spares for and not readily made to be disassembled easily like some other brands are.

Well I’m no expert but they’re very messy inside and some of the parts seem a bit flaky to me.

(Seals go easy etc and I had three machines. So I’m not a convert.)

I’d imagine just mass produced highly marked up machines.

Especially compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen in the espresso world.

There’s a chap in Southampton who repairs all sorts, and has at least 3 coffee machines being repaired at any one time, he has a picture of them on his homepage

https://www.bassettrepairshop.co.uk

No idea where you’re based, but the Southampton chap should provide  inspiration that there are folk out there who are routinely repairing them

https://m.facebook.com/bassettrepairshop/

used fixmycoffeemachine (if that is the one in bristol).  All good, easy, etc.  Just not cheap!  TBH I would tempted to watch a bunch of youtube videos and order a bunch of spares.

Coffee classics came out and did mine.

They’re the official ones I believe.

Yep they are, and were involved with our machine under warranty.

No harm in contact Sage just to see what they say, might be a bog off, but worth a try ! (they have live chat)

Thanks… somehow it’s kind of repaired itself. Water is now pretty close to what it was before, but I think it was a cry for help 🙂 So I’m going to get it serviced.

I’m in Herefordshire so Coffee Classics (after putting me on hold for 7 minutes) tell me they don’t cover our area. Repair/Reuse even tho they state on their website they fix Sage apparently don’t. So I’m leaning towards dropping it off to fixmycofeemachine and seeing if they can do it the same day and I’ll spend a day in Bristol.

I think if I ordered a load of spares it’d be pretty much ‘parts darts’.  I’d rather pay someone to do it properly and give me a few more years even if that’s going to be a couple of hundred quid.

My sage barista has regular issues with it’s three way valve. The solution for me is to  descale regularly (once a month or more frequently) and backflush several times with descale in the machine once I’ve descaled. I also backflush daily with water and weekly with a tablet. Most of the problems for me are related to the valve. It clogs up with scale and general coffee crud so preventative maintenance is mandatory.

I’ve realised dealing with scale from the hard water hereabouts is an everyday maintenance task for my Gaggia Classic Pro. I’ve been able to find loads of information online on working on my machine and I’m happy I took it on myself rather than paying someone else when it clogged up recently after descaling the boiler. Now that I know how to strip it down to clear the solenoid valve and put it all back together again I’d probably tackle any bigger jobs myself too. The OP’s issue sounds however like it might involve replacing thermostats or heating elements, rather than (relatively) straightforward cleaning.

Thanks both – yep pretty sure mine is a heating issue. Although having descaled it as a hail mary move, I wonder if this is why it started working again. Odd tho, as the water flow seemed fine.

I do change the filters every three months and descale/flush when machine wants it. Never occurred to me to do it more often…

Can’t help but me little sage hasn’t been right since I did the recommended flush.

Mine did the same, and it’s a heating issue similar to yours, Al. The recommended service agent was happy to come to me to fix it (easier for me in Manchester) but it was £200 before parts, so currently it’s taking up space in a cupboard until I can be bothered to have a look myself

We have very soft water in Manc, it shouldn’t be that delicate

My original mistake was to think the filter was a water softener – it isn’t. My second mistake was to not realise a backflush and a descale are different things and are often referred to as ‘cleaning’ in the manuals to confuse matters. When I backflush with descaler I usually do it 4 or 5 times to force descaler through the valve.

Hmm that does sound like it could get expensive quickly! The estimate was £200-£250 but that included a service but it was only an estimate. It’s an ex demo machine from my local roasters and I did get a great deal on it and not keen on throwing it away (or sticking in the “Projects” Cupboard as Nick did).

I’m not sure I could be bothered to clean it as often as @jonwe does!  According to a few web sites we have ‘mostly’ soft water here. Don’t really get massive issues with kettle scaling up.