Cost of white goods UK vs France

[palmeira56]

Would be grateful if someone could tell me if cookers, fridges dishwashers etc are more or less expensive in France than England. Many thanks.

[charlie*]

I suppose it depends on what you want!

Having a good idea of what makes models etc I wanted ( Ariston washing machine, Indesit fridge and whirlpool oven) I then looked at Kelkoo.fr and compared prices. I eventually settled on ordering goods online ( no communication problems!) from Multe pass. I personally thought they were cheaper than the UK and easier to sort out if there's a problem.

[palmeira56]

Many thanks for that prompt answer. I was thinking of Miele as they have had a very high "satisfaction rating" in the latest UK poll

[Dunton4]

We decided that it was more cost-effective to buy white-goods in France, rather than go to the hassle of transporting them across, adding on van-hire and so on.  We were very impressed with ordering on-line with www.darty.fr We were able to order our goods and stipulate a delivery day for when we would be in France.  Goods were duly delivered within our requested half-day timeslot and installed for free by very pleasant delivery-men.  The only problem we came across was needing a French telephone number to get through the ordering screens (it wouldn't accept our UK number or mobiles)  As we don't have a phone in France we just used a friend's and had no problems at all.

Sue

[palmeira56]

Thanks so much Sue. The combination of the websites you two have given me and your advice/experience is just what I needed. Thank goodness for the Living France forum and the kindness of the members.

[Opel Fruit<P><BR>Opel Fruit, Dept. 53<P>]

You've got to be kidding...

It is (I thought) widely known that French white goods are 30-50% dearer, make for make, model for model, than the UK.

We bought a Bosch SGS55C02G Full Size Dishwasher from Comet for £319 on one of our occasional trips to the UK - Darty ripoffs want 749 Eur for it!!! That's 50% dearer.

We have also bought (through sheer necessity) known brands of Cooker, Washing Machine and Dryer for MUCH less in the Uk in the past 6 months.

I would strongly suggest to anybody considering purchasing these items to ACTUALLY check for themselves, rather than fall for someone elses misguided steerage. Unless one has money to burn. 

[charlie*]

Whilst it may be 'Common knowledge ' that goods in the UK are cheaper, I can only speak as I have found and I am not trying to " misguide" anyone.

As I stated I simply compared prices of the models I had seen in the U.K with those on Kelkoo. Even then there was a huge price range on the same models BUT many of the French internet sites I looked at were doing special offers or free extended warranties which made them cheaper. Also, there was no way I was going to haul my appliance back to the UK if it developed a fault.

P.S .I would imagine that Palmeira 56 has every intention of checking for his/ herself!

[Teamedup]

Opel Fruit, I really shopped around in France for my Bosch dishwasher and got it for just over 600 euros. I've seen it less than £300 recently in the UK.

I also find the UK cheaper than France for these things.

However, I would be loathe to buy something new in the UK to bring to France. White goods, even the good makes don't seem as reliable as they used to be, so I would buy here in order to have the guarantees.

[opas]

Darty also sell their whitegoods with a 2 year guarantee and free delivery.....Currys or Commet are not going to be much use if/when your washer decides not to spin and empty water all over your kitchen floor.....Darty were brill, sent out a technician the next day and sorted out the problem pronto.

Mrs O

[Opel Fruit<P><BR>Opel Fruit, Dept. 53<P>]

Bosch/Miele/Indesit and other "real brands" do European cover implicitly.

So, no hauling anywhere.

I cannot find any (and couldn't find any) "deals" on proper brands which are anything like comparable in price. Please feel free to prove me wrong! I'm always open to a bargain.

And, have you tried getting supermarkets or retailers in France to actually repair faulty goods? The nightmare begins. We bought a Philips Widescreen TV (big money) here and a matching DVD player. (Brown goods are good value, like sanitaryware). And trying to get the Muppets to exchange or come out to it was a freakin' joke. We had to get seriously legal. This was after 1 month, and the thing went pop. Literally.

[Dunton4]

Charlie has raised a good point.   In the past two years I have bought (in the UK) a washing-machine where none of the first THREE delivered worked (fourth is still going strong x-fingers)  Also a dishwasher that needed FIVE call-outs from the engineer in the first two months and eventually had to be replaced.  I dread to think of the implications if I had taken the appliances to France !  Of course, I could just have been unlucky, but I am very cynical of any white-good appliance working first time these days! In my opinion, this is just one of the hidden costs to consider when deciding where to purchase your white goods, over and above the straight-forward ticket price comparison. Whilst it might be difficult to get French retailers to repair/replace (I have no experience of this) the alternative of having faulty UK-purchased goods in France would be more than I personally could cope with!

Good luck with your purchases, wherever you might make them!

 

Sue

[Opel Fruit<P><BR>Opel Fruit, Dept. 53<P>]

One of the points I have tried to make is "proper" brands.

Sue, you haven't disclosed which brands you bought, but I suspect they were not from the likes of Bosch, Miele, AEG or the like. My price comparisons were for what we were buying - which ended up as being all Bosch, as it happens. We spent £2160 on appliances over 6 months, and these would have cost us £3450 here. Because we chose quality brands, we haven't had any problems, nor do we expect any. Should something go wrong, a local Bosch agent can readily repair. It would take an awful collection of expensive faults to add up to over £1300.

There are cheapo brands here as well as the UK. Proline, for instance, is eastern European junk - wherever it is sold. The supermarkets here sell junk like Tokiwa and Curtess, BlueSky and other naffo names. They are cheap and cheerful, and we believe the rate of Dead on Arrivals is high. 

[Dick Smith]

And be careful to specify German, not Spanish, Bosch.

[Russethouse]

Slightly off topic - sorry.

>>Because we chose quality brands, we haven't had any problems, nor do we expect any. Should something go wrong, a local Bosch agent can readily repair. <<<

Yep, I chose a quality Bosch, still had to wait 2 weeks for them to come out to repair it under the warranty. When they left the machine leaked but the engineer refused to come back and insisted we had a block in our outlet pipe - after several attempts at clearing it we discovered that in fact he had not replaced the inlet pipe correctly.

I'm afraid I am rather disillusioned with them.

[palmeira56]

I seem to have started some debate with this!! Everyone has their story to tell - some good, some bad - I guess this is par for the course - as you say, I shall do my homework and then take a view - nevertheless, the websites you have given me are very useful as a pointer. Thanks to all for your interest and I shall watch with interest to see if there are more replies/advice.

[Owens88]

We equipped our gite with loads of stuff.  I can recall researching the darty site and even visiting Auchan to find the cheapest oven (only to find that they wouldn't take my credit card without the passport).

Observations:

Local 'Expert' outlet  (a brand name for a europe-wide franchise) had the cheapest oven with facilities I wanted, and they flexed their delivery to suit me, and offered to install it !

Very Local outlet of Radio La. Not the cheapest in the world, but not expensive either. Very good on service. delivered exactly when we want.  Also looked at a disfunctional tumble dryer, analysed the piece it needed, and replaced it for free. (He had sold the tumble dryer to our prevous owners but it was well out of guarantee).

Conclusions:

Buying locally can be better value.

 

 

[opas]

We recently bought a fridge from a discount outlet, we had searched through websites and footsearched various outlets to find the `best deal`.

We asked for exact dimensions as space was premium, and were informed accordingly and showed them printed on the carton. we paid for and took the fridge home only to find that when we tried to put it in the space , it wouldn`t fit!

Mr O phoned the retailer and explained that we would have to exchange/refund it the next day and they said `no problem`.....next day you would have thought we had bought unseen ,they said they couldn`t refund ,only give a credit note valid for a month, they didn`t have any other choices to fit our dimensions, thus stale mate, we were adamant that the dimensions on the box stipilated one size the tape measure said another,he insisted that `standard` measurements had changed since our last fridge had been bought(do not know if this is true or not...just didn`t help us) so a stand off continued and after 40 minutes of them realising that a credit note valuable for 1 month was of no means satisfactory to me...I told him I have a cooker ,dishwasher microwave ,freezer all bought within 2 years, did they decide to step down and refund us.

Do not give up and walk away with the first offer!

mrs O

[palmeira56]

All of today's mails have been incredibly useful. It may seem that they are contradictory but they do show a pattern and guidance that is just what I needed. Thanks to all of you who have taken the trouble to reply to my query.

[Bobc]

"Because we chose quality brands, we haven't had any problems, nor do we expect any. Should something go wrong, a local Bosch agent can readily repair. It would take an awful collection of expensive faults to add up to over £1300."

Are your comments based upon experience or your perception of service.

Given other clients previous experience with UK sourced appliances you might wait a long time for French Bosch agents to come and fix appliances bought in the UK.

On the subject of cost of high quality brands - going through trade suppliers, products from Neff, De Dietrich, Smeg, etc are all available from French suppliers at lower prices than the UK and usually with free delivery.

Regards,

Bob Clarke
http://perso.wanadoo.fr

 

[Geoffreycoan<br><hr size="2" width="360" align="left">Les Vallees Gite, Brittany - <a target=_blank href="http:www.giteinbrittany.com">www.giteinbrittany.com<A>]

[quote]"Because we chose quality brands, we haven't had any problems, nor do we expect any. Should something go wrong, a local Bosch agent can readily repair. It would take an awful collection of expensive f...[/quote]

Our experience has been that dishwashers are particularly expensive in France as the French still consider them to be a luxury item that rich people have. When we were looking for a washing machine we found that we couldn't get a front-loading machine in France; plenty of front-loading tumble driers but all the washing machines we saw were top-loaders.

In the end we bought our washing machine, dishwasher and fride from a UK second hand electrical store - £250 for the lot. Thought I'd done well until the washing machine started leaking. Our local agents found us another UK second hand one in france and all was well until it started leaking as well !

Cut a long story short turned out that the fosse and soakaway was blocked up and so the washing machine couldn't pump the water out properly.

I now have two washing machines. Oh well, at least I've got a spare for when the other one breaks.

Geoffrey

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[Teamedup]

bobc, that is not what we found at all. We do have contacts in the trade and the prices they got for us were no different to the discount store we ended up using a couple of euros difference.

[Anton Redman]

An alternative view :

 

When we both of worked in the UK we simply could not afford the time to sit around the house waiting for a repairman. If it stopped working or leaked, I would open it, find out what it was and pick up the parts from local independent parts supplier. If the parts exceeded forty per cent of the replacement cost the item was scrapped. Paying for instance £ 10 for a new drive belt for a £ 90 tumble dryer is fine. Paying £ 50 for somebody to fix it and loosing half a days precious holiday waiting for somebody to fix it is not.

 

One interesting part of the exercise was how few real manufacturers there were and how many parts were common between the cheapest ‘own label’ brands and the top of the range machine

 

The only item of white goods where we have found a huge difference in price between UK and France in recent years has been Dyson washing machines which last time I priced checked were about 60 per cent dearer in France.  Provided you shop carefully using both ‘publicity leaflets’ and the Internet we have not found anything else worth importing or exporting except 50cm by 50cm by 50 cm tumble dryers which we simply could not source in France.  

[Bobc]

"bobc, that is not what we found at all. We do have contacts in the trade and the prices they got for us were no different to the discount store we ended up using a couple of euros difference. "

What are you comparing:

France to France or France to the UK?

And for what brands? Lower cost brands have much less room for negotiation.

Are your contacts registered installers with trade accounts from French wholesalers? - Whilst they would obviously not get the same discounts as a large store, it should amount to more than a couple of Euros.

Regards,

Bob Clarke
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/grindoux

[Bobc]

Anton,

An interesting posting!

As you say, many of these products share common parts and are 'relatively' easy to fix.

The UK seems to have a culture of rip-off service companies - Dynarod, AAA Plumbing, etc, etc, that charge huge call-out fees and then spend three hours fixing something that could be done in 20 minutes.

Puzzled with your mention of tumble-driers - plenty of narrow ones here - but the height and depth? Most worktops are 65cm.

 

Kind regards,

Bob Clarke
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/grindoux

 

[Anton Redman]

Agreed worktops are 60 cm deep and domestic appliences of say 85 cm fit underneath them. The only narrow tumble dryers we have found are top loaders. Our one, which is 64cm tall and 50 cm wide fits under the last 40 cm of worktop and then continues under the slope of the stairs. Hence the problem with standard 60 cm wide French units .

Cannot draw it but it does make sence when you see the kitchen.