# L1, payback time



## 4085 (Nov 23, 2012)

Even though I no longer have an L1, I have been proud owner the past. A couple of years ago, I was banned for life by Coffeesnobs forum for daring to suggest that the smear campaign they ran against Londinium was based on commercial reasoning (Reiss refused to make them importers I think) and they took exception.Anyway,I reproduce a blog entry from Reiss a couple of days ago. It really made me smile!

a couple of years ago you went to considerable effort to discredit the LONDINIUM I at launch

back then when we had relatively few machines in the wild you held the balance of power. you were in a position of trust; your forum members trusted you to provide honest and impartial information about new products coming to market. you elected to abuse that trust

whilst you succeeded in retarding our sales in Australia at the time i am pleased to tell you that for the last 12 months sales into Australia have been steadily rising

i look forward to reading about how you explain your actions to your readers whilst retaining your credibility, as word continues to spread about our machine delivering on every single claim we make

your readers will keep seeing your posts of hatred and keep asking you every month or so to explain how your experience could be so at odds with more than 500 other LONDINIUM I owners in 36 countries, now that the balance of power has shifted and it is LONDINIUM that are in a position of strength relative to you. its a funny old world isnt it?

the mechanics of how it makes espresso remain unchanged from the very first machine we built, so please dont try to explain it away by saying the machine we sell today is nothing like the machine you were sold

LONDINIUM I will always be the machine that people refer to as 'the one CoffeeSnobs forum tried to kill at birth'

you guys will have to live with that against your reputation, whilst we continue to sell more machines into Australia, one by one, and we'll keep posting about it to make sure Australians dont forget

LONDINIUM espresso machines have been designed from the ground up to outperform all others when used at a distance from traditional dealer networks. Exceptional espresso. Exceptional reliability. Rapid parts delivery anywhere in the world

Get in touch and see how we can improve your espresso today, wherever you choose to live


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## Thecatlinux (Mar 10, 2014)

'Banned for life' I am not sure but I guessing that's not the first time you been told that ,


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## Phil104 (Apr 15, 2014)

Banned for life. As the great Marx (Groucho on this occasion) said:

'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member'

The exact wording is disputed but whatever the wording, the principle is the same.


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

I seemed to have walked into some Mel Gibson movie from the 90's


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## The Systemic Kid (Nov 23, 2012)

What, this??


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

No this....

View attachment 13355


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## The Systemic Kid (Nov 23, 2012)

Phil104 said:


> As the great Marx (Groucho on this occasion) said: 'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member'


Groucho was exampling the Russellian paradox about class and membership...or maybe not


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## coffeechap (Apr 5, 2012)

actually this was the case in the early days, the Australians wanted to get the rights to sell the L1 in Australia and thus have a slice of the pie. When this was refused the completely unbiased and not commercially oriented owner of the forum (said tongue i cheek of course) started on a campaign to rubbish the L1, they also kicked off the site people who stood up against them to argue for the L1. Glad I am part of a forum that is open to ideas, impartial in its advice and a friendly place to be.


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## The Systemic Kid (Nov 23, 2012)

Amen to that.


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## Phil104 (Apr 15, 2014)

The Systemic Kid said:


> Groucho was exampling the Russellian paradox about class and membership...or maybe not


Spot on - I think he was - as he was resigning from the Friar's Club in Beverly Hills. Another perspective is that he was invoking second order change.

(And - those Mel Gibson movies are great. The world has forgotten how good he was before he started saying what he really thinks and acting how he really believes.)


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## 4085 (Nov 23, 2012)

Was fun to ruffle a few feathers though! It is not often I fire both barrels, usually keep one in reserve. After a while, they even removed all my posts on the matter. This led to them taking an L!, fitting twin boilers, removing the thermosyphon and making load of other meaningless modifications. The whole excvercise was done to simply rubbish the machine so the importers of all coffee gear could keep control of what went on. it was christened the Australianum....wonder where it is now!

there agin, please do not tell me as I do not give a fig


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## The Systemic Kid (Nov 23, 2012)

dfk41 said:


> it was christened the Australianum....wonder where it is now!


in the dunny??


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## Rhys (Dec 21, 2014)

The Systemic Kid said:


> in the dunny??


Strweth mate! Do you still pull the lever for an extraction? Saves having to push on your own - plus a cooling flush might be needed after a hot curry..


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## Dallah (Jan 31, 2015)

I think the name of their forum indicates the reception you can expect to receive. Being new to this hobby and not knowing the whole story it was interesting to go through that forum and see what had happened. They didn't seem to be even clever enough to disguise their motivations. When it gets down to a machine being rubbished only due to its casing, well why not just read GQ for which machine you should buy instead of pretending its a coffee forum.


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