Your New Coffee Machine, on a Twelve Month Plan

We can’t say that we saw this one coming. For a long time though we have wondered that coffee machines have gone down the path of inkjet printers where the manufacturers will make more money from the consumables than the printer itself. Today we’ve been introduced to a plan, similar to that of a mobile phone from a telco, for a coffee machine. The coffee machine is the mobile phone and the capsules and accessories are the calls and SMS inclusions.

To explain further, Nespresso is allowing you to pay $1 for your next Nespresso machine. You commit to a twelve month plan whereby you pay $40, $50 or $65 (depending on the machine) which goes towards credit that you can use to purchase Nespresso capsules and accessories.

The machines on offer in the Nespresso subscriptions are:

• Essenza Mini for $1 plus a monthly fee of $40, to use on any Nespresso products online
• VertuoPlus for $1 plus a monthly fee of $50, to use on any Nespresso products online
• Lattissima One for $1 plus a monthly fee of $65, to use on any Nespresso products online

The Essenza Mini will normally retail for $159 while the VertuoPlus sells for $299. Neither machine is sold with a milk frother so you’ll likely use your monthly credit towards an Aeroccino which retails for $99. The Lattissima One has the milk function built in and it actually works really well and integrated.

The other interesting factor here is how you would use the monthly credit to ensure you are getting value for money. Capsules do vary in cost depending on the flavour and also depending on the capsule style. Capsules for the Vertuo are more expensive, especially for long black styles. So $40 per month in capsules would indicate that your household will burn through around 50 coffees each month and that number only goes up when you look at the other monthly plans.

If you’re cost conscious and want to join the Nespresso game you’ll need to be looking at this and factoring in how much coffee you drink and also what accessories you will need to factor in also. When you consider a $299 coffee machine for only $1 it can be very easy to ignore the monthly plan but you need to do some homework to ensure it works for you.

More info here