Where to buy your appliances and the retailers to avoid
Consumer advocate CHOICE surveyed more than 5000 Australians about their experiences buying electrical appliances in the past 12 months, both online and instore, to help you shop with confidence.
For physical stores, they asked participants to rate the range of products and brands, value for money, customer service, delivery and after-sales service.
For online stores, CHOICE asked much the same, but added ease of using the website, payment options and the returns process. Only stores that had more than 50 responses were included in the results.
BRICKS-AND-MORTAR STORES
Winnings Appliances took out the top spot for overall satisfaction with praise for its customer service, after-sales service, range of products and brands, and delivery service. Retravision, Betta and Bing Lee scored almost as well as Winnings. Retravision's after-sales service and value for money were high, while Bing Lee's after-sales service didn't rate quite as well as Winnings, Retravision and Betta.
Worst store for overall satisfaction was Kmart. CHOICE says it consistently rated lower than other stores in almost all categories except value for money. Kmart had low scores for range of products and brands, and many survey respondents said it was difficult to find customer service instore.
Best stores for range of products and brands were Winnings Appliances, Retravision and Bing Lee and the worst were CostCo and Kmart.
Best stores for value for money were Retravision, Winnings Appliances, Betta, Ikea, Bing Lee, Costco, Kmart and The Good Guys. Worst were David Jones, Myer, Mitre 10, Harvey Norman, Officeworks and Bunnings.
ONLINE STORES
The best online store for overall satisfaction was Appliances Online, which topped every category in the survey. The worst for overall satisfaction were Dick Smith and Kogan.
The best online shops for range of products and brands were Appliances Online and Winnings Appliances; the worst was Kmart.
The best for value for money was Appliances Online and the worst was Harvey Norman.
Do those results back up your experiences when shopping for appliances?
I bought a great pressure cooker from Aldi a few years ago.
Worked wonderfully until the gasket started to leak - and I can't find one anywhere to replace it!
Annoying and disappointing! :P