Quick question for you all: If you were offered a 25% discount on all the Choice recommended LG products go LG for your microwaves, washing machines, TV and fridge, or would you opt for another brand?
I’m about to move into my first place and am weighing my option and curious about your experiences with LG in terms of reliability, durability, and overall satisfaction. I know they have had a reputation for poor reliability in the past, especially with fridge compressor, customer service and repairability issues but their products are quite well received by the reviews here. I can also get them cheaper through work.
My first thought is 25% discount on what exactly? Is that list price, which is quite often more than one can buy retail at stores, especially during sales.
I often look at the price quoted in Choice tests, list price, and then look at actual prices available in stores and the difference can be substantial.
My experience is also that if buying multiple items, retailers will do deals to get the price even lower.
I have a big screen LG TV and would recommend it. But no one maker is good at everything. There are some that are better at certain things. Like Panasonic for microwaves, or other makers for ovens or washers and dryers.
Here are some of the prices I’ve seen through the company portal, and they seem too good to be true, as the saying goes. I’m aware they might actually be shonky, so want to confirm they are actually good deals.
Here are a few examples of what I’ve seen. Original price in brackets:
I wouldn’t put LG products into the shonky basket. There seems to be reasonable support in Australia. Major retailers sell their goods, and they would not if quality or support from the maker was an issue.
Those prices look very good. You would be hard pressed to get anywhere near those at retail stores. Looks a bit like wholesale price. That is, what a retailer would pay in bulk before adding on the retail margin for profit.
So have a close look at terms and conditions. Are these brand new? Do you need to pickup from some distribution center and do all the installation yourself? Etc.
Have you considered or been advised how warranty will be provided?
If purchasing through work is one making the payment to your employer as the seller, I there an intermediate seller, or is the purchase directly with LG Australia?
The answers need to be considered alongside what Australian Consumer Law advises. The T&C’s attached to your purchase should be available for your consideration prior to any commitment to purchase. If they are not evident, it is important to ask for them. Being fully informed and not just trusting on the arrangement is wisdom.
Who is the retailer as the prices are significantly less than other retailer online pricing?
Have you quoted retail or wholesale prices?
If they are retail prices, it looks suspicious and if an unknown retailer, could be a scam. Scammers often ‘advertise’ prices which are too good to be true, to lure potential victims.
In relation to buying all products from the same brand, I wouldn’t unless all the products are outstanding in every way. Some of the user reviews posted online for some of the models are mediocre, suggesting that longer term user reviews are different to the short term/one off reviews of Choice.
Not necessarily. One of ours was able to obtain household electrical products through a direct purchase at a substantial discount. The arrangement was legitimate. They work for the Australian branch of a well known multinational. AFAIK the discount is relative to the rrp. The deal was for LG products.
Warranty and installation need to be considered before committing. The price advantage appeared to be similar to the very best promotional pricing. The availability of such pricing in everyday retail stores varies with sales cycles. The Choice reviews would also be my goto before choosing any product.
As @mark_m notes, some businesses allow employees to buy goods through the company. This can mean that the business is given a wholesale price (particularly if the purchase is directly with the importer e.g. LG Australia). As it may be considered for ACL rights a business purchase it may not receive the same ACL coverage as a retail purchase by a consumer. The purchaser sometimes can do salary sacrifice to pay off the goods to their Company and at other times must pay the full amount in one go. As an example, CBA used to provide this service to former and current bank employees, whether this is still a current practice I am unable to say as my father who used the system has been dead for 8 years. When my father used the system it was through a purchase order being generated by the CBA, and then my father had to pay the CBA the amount that was charged for the goods. I have just looked at the staff benefits and they still provide a service that appears the same or is similar…
"Staff discounts & deals
Shopaholics rejoice! Thanks to CommBank’s relationship with a range of different suppliers, you’ll be able to take advantage of discounts across a bunch of products and services from TVs to hotels."
A LG OLED48C3 tv. Not had it long, but it is driving me mad trying figure out how to use it. The manual and online support is diabolical
The LG sound bar is great.
Choice more than decade ago said the ideal Kitchen arrangement is A Freezer, pressure cooker, a combined convection and microwave, rather than separate oven and microwave and an induction top. I have:
a Mitsubishi Upright freezer, the only one I could find with auto defrosting in a freezer.
an ALDI 30Lt microwave with grill and convection - it is brilliant, very easy to use, cheap, I now use my old oven to store pots and pans.
a Tefal Fast and Easy stovetop (gas, electric or induction) pressure cooker. again easy to use, quiet (not silent) vent.
Need a bit of kitchen re-design before I get an induction top, but love the idea of having one.
If anyone has some links to some idiot proof instructions on how to do the basics with a LG Smart tv, I would welcome them, a degree in Computer science is no use! :-). I’ve yet to figure out how to add the freetoair point and click to iview, 7+,9Now, 10Play and SBS On Demand. All my Win10 network settings seem to be correct and like wise the LG tv is WIFI connected, but actually seeing eachother is altogether another matter. LG seems to be setup to be Smart only for the companies it has “arrangments”!
So as you can see, I think it better to have best in class rather a single manufacturer.
It sounds like this guy had a problem getting his LG OLED TV to connect to the network properly. The cure was to manually configure its DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS) because the LG somehow didn’t like the DNS server being the local gateway modem. Weird. I imagine any other reliable public DNS server IP address would’ve worked, too.
Maybe yours has a similar problem?
Through four resets and power cycles, the TV continuously claimed it was connected to my network. Yet, when I tried to launch apps or open the app store, the connection failed and/or told me to log in to my account, creating a feedback loop of system errors.
Finally, after a video call with LG, we were able to get the TV properly connected by changing its DNS IP Address from my network’s default address to Google’s (8.8.8.8). LG said my DNS IP address being the same as my Gateway IP address caused the issue, though I’ve had no such network trouble outside of LG TVs.
In my case I am buying directly via Consumer Electronics, Home & Kitchen Appliances | LG Australia. Free delivery is included. My company has an arrangement that gives us “VIP” pricing on listed items. Not all items are discounted and not by this much. It’s very much a case by case basis.
Choice recommends the convection microwave and fridge. Other reviews are favourable for the washing machine. TV is the item I am most unsure about.
When I look at competing brands I find I’m either paying the same price for an inferior product or significantly higher for something with similar features. I am most concerned of putting all my eggs in one basket.
Given the price listed above would you go with the items I’ve listed or is there another product I should consider instead?
We have an LG washing machine for ten years. No problems, sensible cycles, economical to run, gentle with delicates, cleans dirty work clothes well, big enough for sheets and duvet covers. I can’t speak highly enough of it.
A challenging question. Some consumers are price sensitive, some choose by perceived or measured quality, others by style, or advanced function. Choice offers product reviews, reliability ratings based on member real life experience, and where a product has been popular actual user reviews.
It would be polite to suggest there is no one single right (best) or not so good choice. If it were that simple would we all agree to buy the one model and brand of TV or car? No tradie would own other than a basic 2WD Ute made to a budget in India or China, and similar might be said for the brand of TV. No need to agree - however if you need assistance in deciding and your budget is unlimited one might buy the most expensive big name brand model. If means are more limited there are lower cost brands and models with yesterdays technology that will do.
One can look to the Choice reviews and decide on what price point and compromises. If not cost conscious, the recommended products often differ in what they are best at. Personal preference, we may each choose differently. No product is perfect?
Not sure which manual you have tried but there is a very complete manual available for download from the LG site and can be downloaded at the following link
No reason you have to. I was in a position where after my house was built I had to buy a whole lot of things. Fridge, microwave, dishwasher, washer, dryer, TV, etc.
I just looked for the features I wanted. And read lots of Choice tests. And looked around for prices at stores and online.
If it turned out that an LG appliance looked good, buy that. If there was something else that was a better match for my needs, buy that.
You are in a position that you can get special prices on LG products. But that should not be the prime driver of your buying decisions.
As for the TV, I love my big screen LG TV with the ‘magic wand’ remote control. The upscaling of broadcast content to 4K UHD screen is really good.
To answer your post directly without going into issues with warranties, corporate purchases and more, yes, I absolutely would buy all LG. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with LG TVs, washing machines, fridges… I usually purchase through Harvey Norman and always get a good price and good after-sales service.
If you are buying a LG TV you need to make sure that you can download all the Apps. Some TV’s only allow you to download a few of the free to air apps and not the others. EG. ABC Iview, Ten plus, SBS ondemand. Unless they have improved on hthem since I was looking.
To me a TV is a display device. How well it does the job of displaying different video formats, and upscaling from various sources to use UHD is my prime consideration. And my LG does that very well.
Sound? Couldn’t care less. I use a home theatre system. Recording functions? Couldn’t care less. I use an external dual HD TV disk recorder/Blu ray/DVD/CD unit.
Streaming apps? Couldn’t care less. As long as a browser and Youtube are there, fine. If I want streaming I will use an external system, rather than rely on dowloaded clients on the TV, which inevitably go out of date and cease to work.
I suggest that you be VERY careful should you decide to purchase the ACA recommended MS42960BC LG microwave oven.
Yes it does an excellent job but check out the software issues on line. Simply put, it randomly decides to just sit and sulk with no inputs or control at all until it is unplugged and then reconnected. It can be months or weeks between episodes.
It is also a PITA for timing - 10 sec is the minimum and you have NO other control over it coz there is NO WAY to input run times via a keypad or dial in lower increments.
I cannot understand why it is still the recommended unit with all these complaints about the reset actually posted on the ACA website.
For me it works well provided I don’t want to microwave anything for longer than about 5 minutes coz I get tired of pushing the start button to add 30 second increments from the 2 minute slider. Standing watching for a few seconds then touching stop tab for short use like warming coffee is a bit of a nuisance too.
I understand that LG has a similar unit with a time control knob. For me a better bet.
