Brandt Domestic Appliances

Brandt is one of those companies that there's not a lot known about it in some ways and, too much in others.

The actual brand name appears to have been born in Germany and then bought by French owned Moulinex at some point although it is unclear exactly when. Then, in 2001, Moulinex filed for bankruptcy protection in France the business was known as "Moulinex-Brandt".

To our knowledge, up until this point, Brandt had not been sold in the UK under that brand name. However, some of the laundry and certainly much refrigeration had been sold in the UK under various other names, including many retailers own labels and under the "Ocean" brand name.

It probably didn't help that the importer of Ocean went bust under a cloud of fraud and embezzlement at the time involving substantial sums of money.

From the repairers point of view, many of the agents were caught being owed money by the importer for work that they never got paid for, some in the thousands of pounds, which leaves a bitter taste as the parent company did not honor the responsibility for those repairs but did retain the brand.

After this it is said that a group of Italian financiers bought Brandt and De Dietrich forming what was known as Brandt-De Dietrich and, again repair work was carried out by independent repairers.

Again, there was a bit of angst with the repairers in the UK as calls were systematically rejected and unpaid with little or no justification. Spares prices rose substantially and the range of models increased making repairs harder and harder. Then, around 2002 a new UK service manager was appointed who sacked all the long-standing agents with two days notice, despite contractual obligations for a three month period of notice.

After that service migrated to Domestic & General, who ultimately dropped the contract and were reputedly glad to see the back of it due to spares and technical information difficulty. Then the contract was awarded to Connect Distribution who, as of 2007, are still repairing the products through a network of independent repairers.

In the meantime the Brandt name had been bought by Israeli company, Elco, to become Elco-Brandt which also encompassed the De Dietrich brand name. Rumours persist that that this was a front for the ultimate buyer and the company that now owns Brandt, De Dietrich and Ocean, Fagor, the massive Spanish giant.

Retail Prices

Brandt is pitched more towards the budget end of the market but has huge commonality of spares and features with both the Fagor and De Dietrich ranges these days. The premium for De Dietrich in particular really appears to be to cover the aesthetics of the design as well as some of the more modern gizmos on the appliances, such as touch screen operation. Whether the huge disparity in cost is justified or not is for people to decide themselves, however the basic Brandt range forms much of the framework for the brands from what we can see with identical parts being used across all the brands.

Brandt appliances do appear to be competitive in pricing, targeted largely at the contract market.

Spares Pricing

It is worth looking at this in isolation as it is for De Dietrich, basically Brandt spares are all too often ludicrous prices.

UK Whitegoods does have alternative ways in which to obtain many spares for Brandt appliances but, it can take longer to obtain especially cosmetic items such as knobs, door glasses, handles and fascias etc. However, parts still cannot be considered to be cheap by any stretch.

So be aware, if you buy a Brandt appliance, any spares that you will need can prove to be very expensive indeed.

Repairability

Most repairers on the repairs@ system will happily repair Brandt appliances however, owing to the lack of technical back up, the extortionate spares pricing and general hassle of the brand, many will charge more to repair the brand than usual. Some will also refuse to take the repairs on due to these problems.

Warranty service appears now to be much better than it has been for some time but can still be sporadic.