Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Very unhappy with this toaster. It's clearly solidly constructed and really beautiful to the eye. But it's not a museum piece, it's a toaster, so it's primary function has to be accomplished acceptably. The bottom line is that it toasts more unevenly than a low-end Asian one costing 1/10 as much. I was more than willing to invest in such a beautiful machine; still hand assembled in the U.K. no less. But despite trying every iteration of toasting configuration I simply can't get an acceptable result. I talked to Dualit's U.S.-based customer service agent and he wasn't helpful at all. "Preheat the toaster before using it," I was told by a man who obviously was just a 3rd party representative reading from a scripted speech. That's a ridiculous waste of energy and doesn't work in any case. One half of each toast slice gets crispy and the other half barely toasts at all. Sometimes it's a bottom-half vs top-half problem and sometimes it's on a diagonal (see attached photos). If I'm going to have to flip my toast multiple times to create a decent end product I can do that with a toaster that costs far less than $340. So after trying to get decent toast for almost three months now I'm fed up. It's obviously too late to return it, so I'm going to replace it with a less costly, and likely more effective product. I hate having to be so critical of what should be an amazing product but my experience leaves me little alternative.