Look at my stupid new cooker

[WeekendInNewEngland]

I’ve recently bought a new Belling cooker to replace my broken one. Everything seemed great until I came to use the oven. The little indicator line at the top that points to the temperature turns with the knob so once you turn it past about 45 degrees you can’t see where it’s pointing to unless you get on the floor and peer up at it, and it’s a faint line anyway and not easy to see! So I’ve now got to get some kind of marker or sticker to indicate where the damn thing is pointing to.

How is such an obvious design failing missed in development? Did nobody ever try to set the oven temperature during the whole process? Honestly my mind boggles at the stupidity.

Tell me about your stupidly designed appliances if you like.

I’ve remembered something else that’s extremely stupid - dishwasher cutlery baskets! Every single one we’ve had has developed holes in itself like this, which means the cutlery drops through and gets caught on the bottom of the dishwasher so you can’t pull the drawer out. Why can’t they be made of a more substantial material? And why are replacement baskets so expensive?

The dishwasher one is designed so knifes, forks and spoons go handle first, so the prongs, bowl of the spoon and knife blade dry without marks on the bits you eat from (think it’s meant to be more hygienic) obviously if your cutlery has very narrow handles it might go through the holes, but most cutlery wouldn’t (we got holes from trying to dig cutlery out, it was then I bothered to read the manual about how to load it! Obviously if you’re doing it the ‘right’ way, it’s just crap brittle plastic!)
Your oven would drive me up the wall though! It’s not just the lack of a mark, you can’t see the bleeding temperatures! Clearly designed by someone who doesn’t cook!
As an aside I love your thread!

I have a different make of oven that came with a new kitchen, and the knobs on that are similar. Major design cock-up.

Our smeg oven is so overly complicated to put on it's ridiculous, I now know it and it's not difficult but in the beginning I constantly had to look at the instruction manual. It's like a ritual, push the right knob once, twice or three times until you get the setting you want, press a few more times to let the oven know that that is the one you want. Now turn to the left knob and press once, then turn left a few times until you get the temperature, then press a few times more so it really knows it's what you want. If you do any of these steps wrong. Turn the damn thing off and start again.

We load the dishwasher handles down apart from knives, ever since I read an article about someone falling on a dishwasher that had knives pointing upwards and bleeding to death 😱

It’s probably the knives making the holes. But I suppose I’ll take the holes rather than the gory death of one of my household.

That sounds infuriating! Are you sure those instructions aren’t a cheat code for Mortal Kombat?

I bought a new saucepan from Sainsburys last month. It felt reassuringly heavy, but when I came to use it on my gas hob (it was advertised as being suitable for all hobs) it tips over! The weight, it seems, is mostly in the handle so until you get about 100g water/frozen peas etc to counterbalance the weight of handle, it isn't stable.

This is bad enough, but it's even more dangerous when you tip the contents out after cooking and rest the empty pan on the hob (gas turned off) because it's now an unstable hot pan. It tips over and could easily fall onto the floor, landing on bare feet or a small child and causing a nasty accident.

Quite how a pan that is unstable when empty made it through the design and testing process, I have no idea.

This thread has reminded me to write a letter of complaint to Sainsburys!

It dims at night as it's set to that. Try P1

I haven't figured the time going off during cooking
But the control dial I gave to crouch down to see properly

To look in my mums oven you have to get on all fours on the kitchen floor.. it's such an odd design I always wonder what they were doing when they signed that off in the test kitchen... "yup, that'll do Dave... floor oven looks good to me"

😆

I have a Lumie alarm clock, which is brilliant in every way except...
If you don't set the alarm, you can't turn the insanely bright time display off, so if you're planning to have a lie in you still have to set the alarm (albeit for a later time) or put something in front of it otherwise you'll have a stupid bright clock keeping you awake.
And if you do set the alarm, the clock numbers vanish, which is fine except that if you want to check the time you press a button and it makes the actual loudest clicking noise in the world, which is not great for anyone else who might be asleep in your room.

I also have a Miele like the photo above. Considering the price, I would have expected the little picture icons to light up when the dial is pointing at them, but NO, they don't! I therefore need to bend right down to see it.

I assume that its like that as some people mount there oven up high at hip height now- but ours isn't and its a PITA. Its also something I never considered to check before buying it.

Tipp-ex works well for a marker.

If you search in eBay for "cooker stickers" you can buy sheets of various dials and dots that are quite durable. My Neff hob is on its second set since the markings wore off

Oh God my Siemens oven does this. Displays temp and oven setting (fan/grill etc) in digits large enough to be seen from space, but the time and time left on the timer need a mircosope to see. No glancing at the oven from across the room to see how long is left. It’s idiotic.

I hate the fact that grills are inside ovens now. What's that all about?
Bring back the eye-level grill, so you can see what you're doing.

I always put my cutlery in with the handles down and they still fall to bits. I've solved it by not buying another dishwasher when the old one stopped working.

I did have an oven that had 2 positions for the racks near the top and two near the bottom but an empty space in the middle, right where you want to bake things that need to go in the middle of the oven. The control knobs were in an order that made no sense as well.

I have tbe same problem with my Beko fridge, I found that a wine bottle with a long neck and slopeing shoulders like a champagne bottle works or as my more car focused DB suggested a ( new obviously) petrol funnel would work too.

My old cooker with a eye level grill died about
2 yrs ago and I hunted high and low for ages before to find a 2nd hand one bit I got one eventually.
The only thing I font like about it is I have to keep the gas dial / know pushed in for a while to keep the gas supply on.
However the cooker has a mind of its own sometimes 5 seconds is long enough but our record is approximately 17 seconds which is ridiculous.

Oh now I would LOVE an eye level grill again! Toast made in a grill is far superior to any made in a toaster (which are all stupid bastards that leave a strip of raw bread at the top) but you can’t keep your eye on it when it’s three feet off the ground.

Our new microwave has a qr code to use to set the damn clock

@WeekendInNewEngland I love it as well as the obvious like toast crumpets I can cook bacon and sausage, burgers , finish omelettes all where I can see them nowthere's a novel idea huh .

• • Also because the top gets warm , I can warm plates , keep pans of food warm , heat the ( stove top ) kettle

Lord knows where that odd paragraph came from !

Can’t you use the apps section on the virgin box to watch Apple TV and prime? You can for Disney+ and Netflix. I’m sure I’ve seen the icons for the other two in there too.

This is a triggering subject for me. We were persuaded to ‘upgrade’ from TiVo to the Virgin360 box which is a steaming pile of shit and inferior in every way. It is mindbending how nonsensical and un-user friendly it is. Theoretically we should be able to access Apps seamlessly but in practice we usually get an error message or the effort of even attempting to open an App causes the box to restart. I hate that bastard box so much and it is not possible to go back to TiVo once the shits at Virgin have tricked you into ‘upgrading’.