Indesit Company

In 1930, Aristide Merloni founded Industrie Merloni in Albacina, on the outskirts of Fabriano. Business was initially concentrated on the production of weigh scales and subsequently diversified into liquid gas cylinders and hot water heaters. From this was born the Ariston brand name.

In 1975 the name changed from Household Appliances Division of Industrie to Merloni Elettrodomestici and to this day the company is still reffered to in the trade as Merloni despite the name change in 2005 to Indesit Company.

It is worth noting however that this is not the same company as Antonio Merloni who produces the Servis Appliances in the UK as well as many branded products.

Ariston and Indesit are the Company's two main brands in Europe. Also sold in Europe is the Scholtes brand and Philco.

In the UK Indesit now also own the Hotpoint, Creda and Cannon brands as well.

Ariston is the Company's "historic" brand. The Ariston brand focuses on the built-in appliance sector but is also ranked among the top players for free standing installations. In the UK however it is not a well regarded brand due to trade criticism and poor past reliability on some products after the well remembered "on and on" campaign of the 1980's.

Indesit is sold 36 countries throughout the world and 350 million people are aware of its existence. Indesit seems to be a low-cost brand and the appliances are often treated by repairers as more or less throw-away. Low prices have fuelled volume sales.

Many don't really see Indesit for being as large as they are but, they are one of the largest domestic appliance producers in Europe. In the UK alone they have a 38% share of the home laundry market (industry figures, 2010) and an almost 15% share of the entire European appliance market. It is a massive company.

In the UK we suspect that the large market share that Indesit has is driven purely by the Hotpoint brand name as many people do not realise that the Hotpoint branded appliances are no longer British or made in the UK. 

Retail Prices

Traditionally both Indesit and Ariston have been at the lower end of the market trading purely on volume. Creda has for some time been used as a vehicle to access the low price volume market along with the old English Electric brand which is rolled out now and again.

Hotpoint is being traded in the low to mid sector of the market with some exceptions, such as the new Aqualtis machines which appear to be aimed squarely at Bosch. That aim appearing to be to push the Ariston and Hotpoint names to a more premium footing and leaving the others at the lower end of the marketplace.

Indesit Spares

Spares pricing for Hotpoint was always pretty reasonable but on the newer "Indesit" Hotpoint machines the prices seem to have risen considerably.

Ariston spares have always been pretty pricey in relation to the retail price point of the machine but Indesit can be horrendously expensive for spares. On a recent exercise we discovered that a PCB (electronic module) for a current range Indesit washing machine cost in excess of 30% the total retail price of the machine. Spares for the cookers, ovens, fridge freezers, dishwashers etc. also can be very expensive.

More worrying is the trend to make the electronic modules require programming using a special module and a "throw away" one use only card holding the EEPROM instructions. In order to replace many Indesit electronic controllers you do need this equipment making it a non-DIY repair unless you want to, in addition to an over-priced PCB also wish to buy both a programing unit and also the program. This applies to almsot all new Indesit machines and all the brands that they own as they share many electronic components as well as mechanics.

It is commonly accepted that Indeit engineers have a laptop that they can plug in to do this and more but this is not available to anyone not employed by Indesit.

In effect, these spares are rendered unavailable to the general public and the machines must be regarded, in light of the cost of them in the first place, as being made to be disposable items as the cost of replacing a controller for a user would likely exceed the cost of the applaince in the first place.

Do be aware that some online spares retailers will not tell you this. All other commonly used Indesit spares can be found in our online store.

Technical information is restricted or simply not available outside of the company's own engineers or at least can be very hard to obtain, they will also not divulge this information to end users.

Indesit Service & Repairs

Service is now provided through the in-house Hotpoint service path for all the brands with some small franchises. Expect a fare of about £100 or so for a repair outside of warranty although this may include spares depending on the brand as some carry five year spares warranties.

Interestingly many people will get an independent out, often on a low callout charge, to inspect a machine before calling Indesit Service, only calling them after they confirm that the repairs required would exceed the cost of the local independent. The reason being that, even for a blocked filter or no fault found, Indesit will still charge the full call charge.

When you call Indesit for service outside of warranty, according to reports we've had, they will route you to a warranty company who will try to sell you onto a maintenance contract for a monthly fee. The offer will seem tempting but it is actually expensive when you add it up but you can find out more about this from this article and make your own mind up, at least you will be informed.

Alternatively, out of warranty servicing offers you up other options.

Many independents still repair the machines but some are shying away from Indesit products due to the serious lack of technical information and the investment required in specialist tools. That said, most of the independents will offer you more advice and help than you may receive from a call centre and will advice the best course of action most often when you have a problem. You can search for a local repair from our pool of approved appliance repairers from our Find An Engineer search facility completely free.

Some of the more common fault code information for Indesit an be found in our fault codes section, just select Help And Advice then the Self Repair section has fault codes.