‘My £4k Smeg hob doesn’t work with my Le Creuset pans – I’m furious’

Katie Morley Investigates: our reader is unable to properly cook with her high-end appliance

Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Recommended
Dear Katie,
I recently renovated my kitchen and bought a top-of-the-range induction hob from Smeg to match various other Smeg appliances in the room. It cost nearly £4,000, and I had my marble worktop cut to fit it exactly.
Given the price tag, I expected it to work like a dream, but instead I am having some significant performance issues with it. Over time, I realised that the hob is not capable of heating a single frying pan evenly. When I try to cook with my pans, only around 60pc of it gets hot, making even cooking food evenly almost impossible.
Smeg advertises this hob as being “fully flexible”, with no limitations on the size of pots and pans or cooking zones. I raised the issue with Smeg, but after months of emails, wrong information, engineer visits, a replaced hob and poor customer service; I have had enough.
Smeg’s technical team says that the hob performs correctly, but as a customer who has bought a very expensive hob from a high-end brand, I can’t accept this.
The product falls short of its basic function, ie: heating pans, so one can cook and fry on it properly. I have made every effort possible to offer Smeg an opportunity to address this, but to no avail.
I have been offered another replacement, but none of Smeg’s existing models will fit the hole in my worktop that was created to accommodate this hob. I feel very badly let down, and I may have to report this to trading standards if I continue to get nowhere.
– CK, London
Dear CK,
At £4,000, this electric induction hob was one of the priciest on the market. However, you happily splashed out on it because when you’re not working in your demanding finance job, you say you love to cook in your spare time.
Temperature control was an important factor for you when selecting a hob, you say, so you could effectively whip up culinary delights which require a certain level of skill and precision, such as caramelised onions.
You were bitterly disappointed when cooking at home with your pans, which are mainly Le Creuset, you discovered that they appeared to be heating unevenly. You sent me videos and photographs demonstrating the issue, which was clear to see.
When you complained to Smeg, it first sent an engineer to check everything was working and that the installation had been done correctly, which they confirmed was perfect. They also sent you some Smeg pans to try, but the issue still stood.
You were very unhappy, so Smeg agreed to a free replacement hob. However, to your bitter dismay, you faced exactly the same issue with the replacement.
When I asked Smeg about your hob, it said it felt your complaint was the result of your “unaligned expectations” of the high-end appliance, rather than due to a specific fault. It added that in practice, “customer behaviour” may be different to the way the hob was designed to be used.
But when I asked it to state clearly what you were doing wrong when cooking, it was unable to explain.
Smeg compared your case to that of another customer, which also seems to have been filed in a folder labelled “unaligned customer expectations”.
This customer had just spent £50,000 on a new kitchen and installed an expensive Smeg hob hood that sat flush on the counter. It apparently looked lovely, but the customer found that when he cooked bacon the hood could not catch the smoke, so the whole kitchen stank.
When Smeg investigated, it found the problem was that he had installed the cooker hood too low. So its proposed solution? Cook bacon with the lid on.
Needless to say, the customer was unhappy with this as he liked his bacon crispy, but in the end, he apparently accepted a Smeg coffee machine as compensation.
Why Smeg thinks this story is relevant to your case I have no idea, as the functioning (or non functioning) of your hob has nothing to do with the way you designed your kitchen.
However, the fact that your kitchen was built around this Smeg hob is now a big problem for you, as you are yet to find another that would be an exact fit for the hole that would be left in your very expensive worktop if this one were to be ripped out.
This means that Smeg’s offer of a different model or removal plus a full refund, is effectively useless. However, were Smeg to admit the hob was inherently faulty, it would be liable for the “consequential loss” of replacing your kitchen worktop with a new one, and paying a templating company to cut a new hole for a new hob.
This would be a very expensive job indeed. But as Smeg insists there is nothing wrong with the hob, this is, at least for now, off the cards.
Smeg has also offered you £400 (10pc refund) to keep the hob, which you have rejected, although you said you’d have been prepared to accept a 50pc refund because you’re busy and just want this saga over.
I must say, I’m as disappointed as you with the way your complaint has gone. If the hob is working perfectly, then Smeg should easily be able to explain what you are doing wrong to prevent portions of your pans not heating.
Customers purchasing even the most basic of induction hobs have a reasonable expectation that they should be user-friendly, let alone when they’ve spent £4,000 on one.
You will now take your case to the Furniture Ombudsman to see what it has to make of this unsolved mystery. Please do keep me posted.
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email