I wrote about my Biolomix blender from China, that I ordered on Aliexpress 2 years ago. Then five months ago when someone asked me how it was holding up, I wrote about it, and why I was still happy with it, despite having to order a new blade for one of the jars because the ball bearings part broke.
And then more happened. And I didn't update about it. After I replaced the blade on the jar it started leaking. I tried tightening it and it didn't help. And then the entire base of the jar fell off, blade and all.
Not good.
However.
Now what?
A friend contacted me, who bought her Biolomix after reading my reviews, and she told me that her blender jar started leaking, and she wanted to know if the same happened to me. I told her that not only did that happen, but it also had the entire bottom fall off. She asked what I was going to do, if I decided to buy a different blender now or not. I told her that I didn't plan on it, but ordered myself a new blender jar.
"But isn't that 'throwing good money after bad'?" she asked?
For me, not at all. I think with blenders the part that is most expensive and hard to get is the motor. That is the main difference between a Biolomix or a Vitamix and cheap blenders. I need a heavy duty blender because I use mine heavily, and for tough things like blending ice and frozen fruit and making nut butter, not just blending soft soups. The motor and the base are working perfectly. The only thing that has shown wear and tear are the jars.
To buy a Vitamix to replace this would cost me at least $1000 locally. To buy a completely new Biolomix and jar would cost $100 (plus shipping). To buy just a new jar cost me $39 including international shipping. Even if I have to replace the entire thing every two years, I'll still end up saving money, and it would take me 20 years to pay the same amount as a Vitamix. But buying a new jar every 2 years would take me 25 years to pay as much as a Vitamix would be.
So no, for me, its not throwing good money after bad. Its making a decision to buy something that works well, is not 100% top quality, but is definitely much better than low quality. It works high quality style, but doesn't last as long as high quality ones do. I'd say this is firmly in medium quality territory, and for me, spending money on medium quality every 2 years is still a better use of my money than buying highest quality for 10 times the price.
I have no regrets about purchasing my Biolomix blender or buying replacement parts. Now I just know not to buy new blades and just buy a whole new jar.
Of course, everyone else makes their different calculations, but I just wanted to share with you what works for me.
If you were me, what decision would you make? Would you spend more money on this or would you say forget it, and move to a different item entirely?
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A good thirty or more years ago I bought a magimix food processor. I rarely use it. Well over ten years ago I replaced the shredder blade, which is the one I use the most. Replacement blades cost a fortune here, so when it broke a couple of years ago, I didn't know what to do. The motor is very strong, and I use the slicer when making large soups.
ReplyDeleteWhen my daughter saw food processors very cheap in an outlet store I had her buy me one. I figured that a replacement blade for the better brand magimix would cost about the same, if I could even find one. Now I have both machines. The new one if for shredding, and the old one is for slicing and anything else needed.
I don't think of it as "throwing good money after bad", but more like, "Well, if a new one costs $X and a single part costs $X-Y, then is it really worth saving $Y if I'm going to have to go through this every [time period]?" For some things (like our Dyson) it is, because a Dyson is many hundreds and even if the extension replacement is $50, it's still vastly cheaper than getting a new Dyson. But for things like a blender, where the container costs $50 and the entire thing costs $70, the math gets a little more tricky (that's how much ours cost). We recently started having the same problem with our blender; I'm still undecided about whether to upgrade.
ReplyDeleteI will say, though, that at a certain price range, things tend to vastly improve in quality. I was unconvinced about the Dyson vacuum cleaner, but then my husband bought one and it really does live up to the hype. I'm still not entirely sure that it's worth the 400 euros it costs, but it is noticeably better than any of the cheaper ones that we've gotten. Same goes for our food processor. So again: I'm not sure that I want to spend big bucks on a blender. But it would probably be a massive step up.
The last sentence looks like it belongs near the beginning of the post, definitely out of place. You might want to look it over and edit it. That said, I appreciate your thoughts and agree with you that it was cheaper and more sensible to just order parts rather than buy the more expensive one.
ReplyDeleteYes, I've been trying to make my Nutribullet blender work, esp. as it was a gift! I actually found a barely used one exactly like mine on FB Marketplace, so it was worth the drive to another town to purchase it for $45 usd, and now we have an extra motor, plus all the extra sizes of jars, seals, tops, and blades! Costco is now selling a new Vitamix for around $300...so it may be worth it to buy it, but I do like the ease of cleaning on a Nutribullet (upside down) style of blender.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing happened to us with our blender from China (leaking. We tried repairing and it didn't help), but we had also just gotten a new blender for free when purchasing our oven, so we got rid of the whole thing. I think we even thought about getting a new jug but I didn't remember that you could buy them separately!
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