Mahar Coffee is a scam/fraud/dupe site - see: http://coffeegeek.com/forums/espresso/machines/543587 To quote 'Lin' from that thread,
I want to share my experience about Mahar Coffee.... Unfortunately I was one of the fish tried to purchase the Isomac Millenium from that website. I wrote about 15 e-mails to consult details and it sounds like real. I made the order also made the wire-transfer. It's a little strange that they don't take credit card, but it's in Indonesia....so I thought not a big deal. The next day after I paid the bank called me to inform that the swift code is no longer valid so I asked Mahar coffee and then they gave me a new swift. In the mean time I had to wait for like 3 days because they were in some kind of Muslim holiday. Monday, they wrote me and mentioned a problem with their bank account and asked me to re-direct the money to another account. Then I kind of realized that's a fraud...so I called the bank for help and did some procedures to cancel the transfer in order to get my money back. Now I have to wait until next Friday to confirm that I have my money back, but I hope sharing this experience will keep other coffee lovers from being deceived......and I feel so stupid about the whole thing. Nevertheless, the price of Isomac Millenium is $550 on the Mahar coffee and I have a friend who bought one same machine for 500 euros on website and has it delivered to Germany. That's why I thought I got a good deal as he did.....but now I think he declared 500 euros probably just to make his wife feel better.
That's an interesting item (the Faema), but it really puts the pricing of some local machines in perspective. I'll PM some advice on looking at others. If you get it, it's a fair price for a stunning item, but you'll want to be certain that you can get it here in one piece (drained, wrapped, packed, crated, bounced around, dropped on it's top, crushed in in a corner etc). You'll need to pay shipping, landing fees, possibly fumigation and customs charges, possibly shipping at this end to your door etc. Then you've got unknown restoration and parts sourcing costs - it's lovely on the outside, but what's the boiler like? If I were to buy a Faema project I'd be looking at a cheaper one than that, despite the 'rarity' and beauty. Lovely machine though, will be in my jealous place on and off if you do secure it 🙂
