Maxwell & Williams

Stainless steel travel mug – Maxwell and williams stainless steel travel mug, seal failed after second use. Unable to return as I bought it on holidays. No option to claim warranty on maxwell and williams website. $25aud wasted.

Great customer service – Wow. A customer service response that was actually true to its name. Prompt reply; human (not robotic) communication; friendly and apologetic; and a willingness to remedy the problem. Perfect customer service response. Thank you, Kay

What happened to one of my fave brands??? – I was once a BIG fan of this brand… More recently I wish we hadn’t wasted our money, so disappointed in the very apparent drop in quality. I was given a few dinner sets and related crockery in house warming gifts long ago in 2003 and I loved them, they were really well made, I still have an assortment of dishes, cups and bowls in constant use… Read more

that are unchipped and very presentable almost 20 years later. Really good quality, robust for every day. Nothing is forever - the best ceramic won’t survive impact with kitchen tiles, so we lost a few over the years - but these come close! Those products, those days - 5 stars. I wish that was the review I was writing.

Some 3 years ago when I saw them on sale, I thought I’d replace the dwindling dinner pieces and bought a couple of dinner sets, a slightly different looking style but still the White Basics range I like best. They stayed in the box for a couple of years as we didn’t need them, still had enough of the old ones. Cups, on the other hand, were in heavy use and had more breakages. The cheap Kmart/Target basic white coffee cup did the job (I like a specific size and shape), but when I found matching M&W tall cups in a department store on sale just last year I bought a dozen of those too.

At the start of 2020, with some larger family events coming up, I opened the boxes and added the new sets to the crockery in my cupboards. I had also accumulated a few other products (most wanted) over gift occasions in the last 5 years… my kitchen looked like a walk-in ad for the brand.

While it might have started that way, it turned into a working test kitchen that demonstrated this last few months the really disappointing, staggeringly poor quality of the products I had. This is how they performed less than a year out of the box (the crockery less than a month!) with normal handling and use - i.e. not being dropped on the kitchen tiles etc.

Crockery - Basic White Dinner Set, tall Cups

1 month. I did not get 1 lousy month from the many cups, which retailed at $4-5 each! They all chipped mysteriously, so easily it was staggering. I don’t even let glassware and crockery touch anything in the dishwasher (probably why my older sets are in such good shape). If the light clink of cups touching in the cupboard when you grab one or put them away has caused this, then they are exceptionally poor quality.

I’m peeved I even spent half of the RRP since the (smaller) <$1 Kmart and Target versions are much more resilient. That’s 1 dozen coffee cups that were brand new a moment ago, and now are a health risk after literally a couple of uses. No-one wants to serve their guests shiny and new chipped crockery.

The same with the bowls in the dinner set. The edges are thin, like the cups, and just chip too easily. I’ve so far lost only a couple of bowls because we are still using the old crockery until I can replace them, no one trusts/likes these anymore. Note the Ikea glasses we use at work are much thinner, often stacked badly in the dishwasher and not a chip. EPIC QUALITY FAIL on the crockery.

The Spice Rack

Why would you buy a spice rack? To keep your spices tidy and at hand while you’re cooking, and enjoy how smart they look, all organised and print-labelled. The jars are glass, the lids plastic, the stand chrome, all should be easy to gently wipe down as needed, and you will need to if you USE them!

Imagine my surprise when a tiny splatter of oil wiped off removed the entire word “ginger” from the top of the lid like it was never there. Oh! The labels are not oil resistant. A subsequent gentle wipe down with a cloth barely damp with water almost destroyed “oregano” (which now reads “or no” because the middle smudged away). What did they print the labels on with, flour? They can’t withstand any normal kitchen handling - the print is NOT even slightly water resistant! ?? I can't even wipe them down??

It doesn’t look so smart anymore, and if those labels all wipe off it during light cleaning, it will be useless to me. For a product that cost almost $100 (it's the large 21 spice rack) this is quite unacceptable.

Salt & Pepper Grinders

Lasted about 6 months before the bottom plastic lip on each cracked and fell off and they wouldn’t stand upright any more. They were dropped on separate occasions on the kitchen bench (less than a foot, no it’s not stone!). Same as the supermarket grinders, plastic casing is no stronger or more resilient. Except these cost a LOT more!!

The Mortar & Pestle

I was rather enjoying using this to grind my spices, until I dropped the pestle.. not far from the tile (intercepted by my leg), but it cracked cleanly in half like it had a fault line. Of course, to the tile I may as well have dropped an eggshell. I have face cream jars stronger than this crushing tool…

Coloured Knife Set in Stand

Absolute waste of space and plastic. Cheap clear plastic stand with knives not sharp enough to use!! Won’t cut through the skin of a tomato, squashing my fruits & veg!! The harder produce - forget it, not worth losing a finger exerting the pressure you need. The serrated bread knife was ok - being serrated - but the other knives seem to be for cosmetic purposes - something colourful for your kitchen bench.

Except if you use them it scrapes and clouds the stand; and the coloured skin on each blade starts coming off - they aren’t that nice to look at (and where is that plastic going??). Good for nothing, more landfill.

Excellent aftersales customer service – I had a small issue with a Maxwell and Williams 3 tier cake stand which we purchased as a gift. My email to customer services was responded to straight away, followed up with a few more emails for clarification. The parts that I required were dispatched the same day by post. It was extremely easy to sort out my minor problem. Maxwell and Williams service dept. was a delight to deal with.