Breville Keurig BKC700XL Coffee Maker -- Poorly designed, unreliable

by Ed McCloskey
(Westfield, NJ USA)

Review of Beville Keurig BKC700XL coffee maker. This is one of the most frustrating appliances I have ever owned! In the beginning it worked fine. I work variable hours in the middle of the night. My wife bought this for me for Christmas 2010 so that I could make a quick cup of coffee in minutes when I needed one in the middle of the night.

We have only used filtered water in the machine. It worked fine for a few months. Then it started making extremely variable quantities of coffee. Instead of a cup, it would be ½ cup, ¾ cup, etc. Then nothing would happen. No coffee at all. Then the infamous “descale” message appeared.
It has never worked right (for long) ever since.

At this point, we couldn’t even descale it since nothing would flow. To descale the machine you run vinegar through it instead of water. Our problem was that when we pressed the “Brew” button, nothing happened.

We searched the internet and found many suggestions to handle this situation. We eventually got through “descale” and the machine could brew coffee again – for a very short time. We descaled more. Lots of vinegar. Then it would work again for a short time. And of course it would fail exactly at those times I wanted a quick cup of coffee.

By August of 2011 we were fed up. This was not a cheap machine and the coffee itself is not cheap. The machine was $249. The coffee is about $.75 per cup. My wife contacted Breville tech support to see if there were something we were missing. We were authorized to go through a vetting process to make sure we were eligible for warranty return.

The original receipt couldn’t be found. Instead of going through the vetting process, my wife did another descale. It again started working. This pattern continued until December. Then in December it really stopped working. We thought the warranty period had ended (the original receipt still couldn’t be found) so we were committed to getting the descale working. After gallons of vinegar, it started working again -- for a very short while.

So here it is January 2012. It stopped working again. Again descale with vinegar until it was flowing correctly. Then only using distilled water. It brewed exactly three cups of coffee before it STOPPED AGAIN!! Ironically my wife found the original receipt from December 2010.

Then I got interested and started researching the Breville Kurig coffee maker problems on the internet and found that our problem with the machine is by no means unique. Many others have complained of the same issue. It’s ironic that our $30 Mr. Coffee has worked for years with no problems. We still have a working television purchased in 1986.

We have a radio purchased over 20 years ago. We use it every day and it still works great. This is my typical experience with appliances. My conclusion is that the machine is a poorly designed, unreliable product with short longevity. Not worth $249. Not worth $100.

Buyer Beware!