Some advice for consumers about products and suppliers in New Zealand

         Nuclear-free New Zealand is a wonderful place to live. Nevertheless, this beautiful land presents some hazards for consumers. Although most retail and service firms do an honest business and provide fair value for money, there are (as in any other country) some businesses a consumer might wish to avoid. This page will endeavour to provide information on "lemons" among products of all kinds, on firms who do not live up to their side of the bargain, on retailers and tradespeople whose service falls below a generally acceptable standard, and similar warnings to consumers. When appropriate, we will also provide recommendations of particularly good products, value, or services.

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Check out a list of links to other sites dealing with substandard, unacceptable, or just plain bad products or services? Click here.

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       First, a few words from the perspective of the Far North, which has a well-deserved reputation for being the home of "glide time". The pace of life in the "Winterless North" of New Zealand is slower, more relaxed, not as frantic as life in the urban centres to the south. Delays and missed times (and missed dates!) that would be unthinkable anywhere else are routinely accepted by consumers in the Far North. [I once ordered, from a supplier in the Bay of Islands region, a load of building materials for a house I was renovating. I ordered the materials on Monday; delivery was promised on Thursday.. Sure enough, the truckload of materials arrived on site on Thursday--four weeks later!] Consumers new to the Far North might think that a particular delay represents especially bad service, when it might (probably does) just represent the local style.

Disclaimer: We do our best to check out the faults, products, lemons, shoddy service, etc. reported here. Nevertheless, all of these reports consist, at their foundation, of someone's opinion. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily (although they may often echo) those of the owners of this site. We do our very best to check out any factual representations, but we make no guarantees, stated or implied.

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       Here are the products, services, companies, &c. currently found on this page:

Perhaps it is necessary or appropriate to point out that no person associated with this site has any connexion with any of the firms or products mentioned on this page. Likewise, no person associated with this site has any connexion with any competitor of any firm or product mentioned on this page. These warnings or reviews (or whatever else you would like to call them) are meant to be a public service.

Panasonic printers: The New Zealand distributor of Panasonic printers seems to have no interest in building customer loyalty or, indeed, ever getting any repeat sales. Our Panasonic laser printer stopped working after only about three months of light use with a "change drum" message on the LCD. After the drum was changed (under warranty--to give credit where it is due), the printer was used for another month of light duty before we went overseas for an extended trip. By the time we returned, the printer was no longer under warranty (even though, of course, it hadn't been used in the meantime). After fewer than a dozen sheets of paper had gone through the printer, it died with a lot of machinery noise. The NZ distributor charged about sixty dollars just to diagnose the problem. Not only did they then refuse to repair the printer under warranty, they wanted to charge more for the repair than we instead paid for a brand new Brother printer--which, incidentally, has worked flawlessly for three years of steady use.
Our recommendation: Do not buy Panasonic computer products, and, in general, avoid Panasonic products like the plague.

Steel sheds, kitset garages, &c: Thinking of buying a kitset garage, sleepout, shed, or house? Keep thinking, and think very carefully. As far as we have been able to ascertain, there is no such thing in New Zealand. Many companies advertise kitset buildings, some with wood framing, some with steel frames. None of them, as far as we have so far been able to find out, actually deliver kitsets. A kitset is something the consumer or "end user" can put together with a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and maybe a spanner or two. In a genuine kitset, all holes are pre-drilled or -punched, all materials are precut to length and shape, and so forth. As far as we know, none of the NZ "kitset" companies supply such a prefabricated building. What they supply is a collection of materials. That isn't so bad if the materials are wood, but it can create serious headaches (and additional expenses) if the materials are steel.

Most "kitset" suppliers seem to supply materials for wood-framed buildings. In Northland, at least, only two firms (as far as we know) offer building "kitsets" with steel frames. A gentleman in Maungatoroto sold us a garage "kitset" under his company name, Sheds of Steel. The "kitset" did not contain plans or instructions for the particular garage we were building. The generic instructions, covering the many different building "kitsets" offered for sale, contained errors and omissions that made assembling the frame very difficult. Also, many of the heavy steel structural members had to be drilled on-site, which required purchase of a heavier duty drill. At a number of points in the course of construction, we found that some pieces had not been supplied. Most of those were eventually delivered, but not before the project had been delayed several months. To be fair to Sheds of Steel, however, the information we've been able to gather suggests that other builders' experiences with the other supplier of steel-framed "kitsets" have been no better.
Our recommendation: Buy from whomever you like, but be aware that the project is going to be a good deal more difficult and is going to take a great deal more time than you had anticipated.

Books: Native New Zealanders who haven't spent much time abroad might not have noticed, but books, both new and second-hand, in New Zealand (and Australia) are ridiculously expensive. Some of the magnitude of book prices must result from the small size of the domestic market and an attempt to prop up the income of New Zealand writers and publishers, a laudable aim. When a reader of popular fiction browses for an entertaining read, inducement to buy a NZ book seems a good thing. When a reader seeks a specific work by a specific author and has to pay twice as much (or more) in New Zealand as in some other countries, this doesn't seem so good. It is possible to buy a book from any of several booksellers in the U. S., for instance, and have it delivered to one's doorstep in NZ for less (including the transportation) than one would pay for the same book in New Zealand.
Our recommendation: Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene, Oregon, USA, or
Powells on line.

Washing machines A local jeweller and household appliance dealer touted the Asko front loading washing machine as the world's best [it was priced accordingly]. Front-loaders are more environmentally friendly; they need less water and less detergent for a given amount of laundry. Front loading machines also cause less wear of the fabric being washed, so your clothes and sheets don't wear out as quickly. On the other hand, they are somewhat slower.

Convinced by the retailer's pitch, this reviewer bought an Asko machine. A vital electronic component died within less than two months but was repaired promptly under warranty. After about a year of use (shortly after the warranty had run out), one of the brushes in the motor broke. Not a big problem, the owner thought, a brush for an electric motor will be cheap. Unfortunately, brushes are not available: the user has to buy a huge part--an entire half of the motor casing--for well over a hundred dollars. If you don't do all the labour yourself, you'll end up paying more than two hundred dollars for the repair--and the same thing happened again a year later. Evidently, Asko uses laminated brushes that de-laminate and snap off, apparently on an annual basis. Incidentally, Asko (a Swedish company) has a URL/Web domain but nothing loads in our browser when that domain is accessed. Emails to Asko have not been answered. Our recommendation: Avoid buying Asko washing machines. If you already own an Asko machine, when your brushes fail replace them with standard (non-laminated) brushes--you'll probably have to sand these down from a larger size.

Fresh fruit: The Far North (along with the Bay of Plenty and Hawkes Bay) could easily be considered the fruit bowl of New Zealand. Nevertheless, the quality of fruit available to consumers in the Far North is often substandard and sometimes downright poor. On a number of occasions, we have purchased melons from the Big Fresh supermarket in Whangarei, only to discover when we got home that the fruit was unfit for human consumption (we also bought some Kraft brand Philadelphia Cream Cheese at the same Big Fresh and found the cheese discoloured and smelly later the same day). Other retailers have similar quality control problems. Kaitaia's local greengrocer, Bell's Produce, sold several inedible melons over this past summer. Disappointingly, Bell's was not interested in making restitution when told of the problem.
Our recommendation: Buy with care, and don't expect much sympathy if you find you've bought something only fit for the pigs, the chooks, or the compost heap.

The Warehouse: The big, red shop that advertises itself as the place "where everyone gets a bargain" does sometimes offer genuine bargains. Usually, though, as in most times and places, you get what you pay for -- a deal that seems to good to be true probably is. Because The Warehouse markets at the bottom end of the price range for most of the goods it sells, some products of questionable quality can occasionally be found. Most Warehouse outlets (or at least most of the ones we and our contacts are familiar with) are pleasant and helpful about the return of shoddy goods. If you buy something substandard from The Warehouse in Whangarei, however, you may just find yourself stuck with it.
Our recommendation: Avoid the Whangarei Warehouse when convenient and caveat emptor.


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As mentioned above, we aim to make this page a public service. Several people have contributed suggestions and ideas about products and firms to be included (and more are in the pipeline). If you would like to submit a product, service, or company for possible inclusion on this page, to suggest another page to be linked, or to contact us for any other reason, just click here.

Here are some links to other pages dealing with substandard products and services:

Better Business Bureau mainly of interest in the US
Consumer Democracy
The Rip Off Report
The Lemon Aid Stand

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