It’s now been two-weeks since I left my faulty halogen oven, ready to be collected and returned to Andrew James. My concern began to grow earlier this week, as I’d expected and hoped to hear from them. I dropped an e-mail in to their inbox on Wednesday night and then, before I could even check my e-mails twenty-four hours later; I received a text message at 9am on Thursday morning from a courier, stating that my anonymous parcel was on its way…
It could only be one thing!
Packaging – manufacturers often do it best.
I guess it was more economical for them to send me a brand-new replacement as opposed to making a repair. These sell for only £50 each. Either that, or, they couldn’t be bothered to handle the mess of shredded-paper packaging I’d inserted!
I noticed straight away that, for whatever reason, the front cover to The Halogen Oven Cookbook has been updated. Same author and same picture-less recipes inside, though.
Can you imagine how refreshing it was to reveal such a clean and shiny oven? My original certainly never gleamed as much, no matter how much or how often I cleaned it!
Along with the manual, I now of course have a surplus set of accessories to complement my halogen cooking, as it wasn’t necessary for me to return my originals along with the faulty oven. Through Freecycle, I’ve already found a taker for these. I wouldn’t think of trying to make money from it. While it might seem nice to have the option of a second set of wire racks and spare baking trays; it’s important to remember that I’m trying to declutter and to work towards living with only the essentials [more on this, soon!].
I’d thought about asking for the model with the removable lid as my replacement, because it had always lived underneath a wall unit. But from what I’ve seen elsewhere, storing that lid (especially when hot) is a pain, the purpose-made racks aren’t brilliant and I do not have a lot of spare workspace in this corner. So, I’ve trying a new arrangement where I’m using my kettle ‘cack-handed‘ and the oven lid is free to hinge up in a space between cabinets.
I’ve already used this replacement oven a couple of times and the familiar sounds of the new halogen oven and refreshing, after several moths of grating and grinding. I still have another twelve-months of the warranty to go so, let’s see how long this now lasts!
As far as worktop models go in the UK, this appears to be about as much as you can spend, which is almost a shame, considering that induction hobs can be bought for as little as £30 or something over £100. Perhaps that’ll change though, should these ovens catch on?
I am slightly concerned by the fact that the light seems to stay on for a lot longer than I remember. Particularly when I set the temperature to 200° or higher. There’s less of a ‘break’ (averaging about eight seconds) between each heating cycle. But maybe my first oven was like this when new? It is pretty cold at the moment and there’s always the possibility that my previous oven was more fault-ridden than I realised and wasn’t reaching the stated temperatures…
I had the thought of another return and another fortnight without my beloved oven… But I’m going to invest in an oven thermometer so that I can become more certain.
Thanks for reading! All the photos in this post were taken with my smartphone, hence the quality. I’d also like to say a big thanks to Andrew James for replacing my oven in well under thirty-days.
