If your machine works, you might love it. Ours broke down fast, and so we didn't love it or SCG as a result.
Positive Product Points
For the days that it worked: + styling (I thought it looked nice) + steaming (wand was accessible and powerful) + settings (ability to control pre-shot and brew timing to the second was nice) + interface was fairly easy to understand and use
Negative Product Points
+ position of the water reservoir (it's difficult to remove completely if you need to) + initial brew from the machine was weak (more on this below)
Detailed Commentary
I purchased this machine as an upgrade to my wife's Barista. After years of her using the Starbucks machine, it was finally wearing down, and I researched through many sites what kind to buy and decided to give this machine with a PID a try. I knew this would challenge her brewing skills, but I hoped if she used it and took the time to learn, she could get even better morning lattes than she'd ever had in the past.
We unwrapped it on Christmas, read through the booklet, and she started to brew her shots as she had with her Barista.
Initial thoughts form her was that she commented that the steaming was nice and powerful, but the second thing she and I noticed was that the taste of the brew was just not as strong as what she'd been used to from the Barista. Now, this could be that due to PID temp/timing settings she'd need to learn to fine-tune her skills with this machine, but it seemed odd for it to be SO much different (given she was using the same roast and grinder as she had been) when changing machines.
Within a day or so, we had the first and oddest failure. The metal rod on the right that is a pressure overflow vent fell down/out/off the machine from mere casual use. In fact we're not even certain what caused it to fall off. It just was there one day, and kinda lying by the machine the next. We were unable to figure how to reinsert or replace it correctly so that it was properly positioned after that. It was a bit disconcerting to see the hardware (though a minor part) break after such a short time.
After 3-4 days, the steamer would spontaneously stop steaming after a few seconds, and then reset. And it just became more and more difficult about doing that job at all. After 6-7 days, the brew setting started to experience the same issue. So in the end, within a week, we were left with a machine that wouldn't brew, and wouldn't steam unless you begged it to do so by pressing the buttons 8-10 times and hoping that that function would work and stay on to completion. It was no longer a useful machine.
In frustration we sent it back for a refund.
Buying Experience
Purchase was fairly easy through the website, but the website did have an image issue that made the site response slow to load pages. Once purchased, I paid for the next grade up for the non-free shipping, but as it was Christmas time it still took 6 business days for delivery to happen. When issues arose, the response from SCG was reasonably swift, but not particularly helpful aside from to provide me an RMA number and tell me to ship it back. Even though part of the product had physically fallen apart, we still had to pay $70 for shipping (cheapest UPS for a package this size) to send back a defective product. I did a reasonable job of cleaning and repackaging the machine in it's original box/material and sent back the 'free' gifts as requested by policy, and they refunded my purchase price. My wife called them later to say she was dissatisfied with the support (and having to pay return shipping for a defective product), and the response was a suggestion that perhaps we didn't read or understand the directions. I'm still not sure how reading the directions prevents a machine from falling apart, but it did confirm the level of interest that SCG seemed to have in listening to our customer concerns.
