Caple appliances

Becky_M_3

Does anyone have any experience of Caple appliances? Have been told by salesperson that they are the same make as John Lewis appliances

cattie

They certainly aren't the same make as JL appliances. Everybody who wants to be associated with a bit of quality likes to tag a John Lewis make onto it.

John Lewis use various of the well established electrical companies to badge their own make products.

Caple are forging a name for themselves with their appliance & sink range for their cheaper priced products & seem popular enough. Here is a potted history of their company.


Caple Kitchen Appliances
Budget appliance brand owned by Maurice Lay Distributors





Maurice Lay Distributors is one of the large kitchen distributors in the UK which has been around for some time. In the 1980’s they launched their own budget brand of appliances under the Caple name.

Appliances can be made anywhere but appear to be mainly sourced from the usual suspects such as Menenghetti for cooking, IAR Siltal for washing machines, Midea for dishwashers and so on.

Retail Prices

Budget brand and budget appliances and this is reflected in the overall quality.

Spares Pricing And Aftersales Service

Spares pricing isn’t too bad although there can be difficulty in obtaining spares and technical information, notably for the Chinese produced appliances.

There has been some issues with fan motors on the built-in ovens being noisy. General vibration and rattling.

The appliances are not complex and are pretty straightforward enough to repair although curing the noisy fans can be a bit of a grind as it’s basically down to the fact that the machines are produced to a price.

Dr_Grey

When buying Caple dishwashers be aware the the maximum dinner plate size is 26cm dia. This is small! Anything bigger and it fouls the top water spinner and so the top layer of glasses etc does not get washed properly.
There appears to be no way around this problem apart from hand washing all your dinner plates.

Dr_Grey

Further to my post on small plate sizes in Caple dishwashers - there is a work around for the small plate size in that you can put the larger, but not to large, plates in but you will not get good results from the top tray as the water spinner will be stationary during the wash cycle because the large plates will have stopped it spinning.

BC1973

Steer well clear of CAPLE. We moved in to a new-build house three years ago which was fitted with a CAPLE dishwasher & fridge-freezer. Although the dishwasher is fine in practice it does take a mighty long time to run a decent cycle (2.5hrs) but the fridge however has been a nightmare.
It broke down just prior to Christmas (the thermostat went and it was freezing things quicker than the freezer), an engineer was despatched from RepairCare and he replaced the circuitboard. But this didn't solve the issue and, after a Christmas of storing food in our downstairs toilet to prevent it from freezing, he returned only to point out that the back of the unit had cracked through and moisture was leaking in to the fridge causing the freeze and the inch-thick layer of frost that has formed on the inside back.
The engineer assures us that it is a product fault and that any decent fridge should last 5 years, not 2.5 Caple however have taken the attitude that it's older than one year so not their responsibility.

My parents have John Lewis appliances throughout and they are 5+ years old and still going strong. I can't comment really on whether JL & Caple are essentailly the same but I do know that our dealings with CAPLE have been enough to put us off of buying from them.

kwatt

Caple is a brand owned by Maurice Lay that uses bought in products from any number of manufacturers all over the world. Often, two models even in the same range can be completely different, made in different factories, in different countries.

I'd peg them lower end mostly but with some decent mid range stuff as well. As usual, much of it comes down to price.

A little on Caple here.

That quote looks like one I wrote.

John Lewis appliances are almost exclusively Electrolux machines rebadged for John Lewis. They're no better than a bog standard Zanussi or Electrolux machine despite what John Lewis may try to tell you about German heritage or design.

John Lewis info here.

On either page there's not too much info because they are both rebadged products with not a lot to say really. You can find more in that section of UKW on the suppliers that they use if you dig about a bit.

HTH

K.

namecheck

That's interesting kwatt.
I've noticed Caple appliances in a number of new build show homes, installed for a (low) price presumably. They have never appeared to be very good quality.