The Nespresso Vertuo Next we had would
- when initially turned on, immediately blink orange and not stop
- if you pressed it, sometimes it would switch to blinking orange twice, then pausing, over and over
- the application would various show and error that the machine was unlocked, or ready to brew
- never was the mobile application useful
A couple tips that I struggled with from watching videos (and I saw also in the comments):
- For the model we have, the first two screws required a Torx T10 head.
- The black pastic top piece that you first need to remove (after taking off the screws), has two plastic hinge type locks. Use a flathead screwdriver or any thin shiv to press down on these, one at a time, to remove it.
- Similarly, after removing two more screws, the round head has two plastic hinge locks at the front. Again, one at a time, use a flathead shiv to press up while gently pulling up from the back (where you took the screws out)
- The silver metal half-circle piece that locks in the cup holder plastic was extremely tight and difficult to remove. Pulling apart the black pastic cup (where the pod directly sits on) from the clear plastic cup holder was also very tricky; it was not easy to squeeze back through the funnel.
Yet this is exactly the spot where coffee grounds accumulate and you need to clean. This black ring also was cracked.
Multiple videos mentioned the optical scanning part where the pod barcode is read gets dirty, but this one didn’t seem scuffed or anything. It is screwed into the rim next to this piece.
- The front side half circle pieces were also unpleasant to snap off.
- There was a dead bug next to the electronics part of the machine, but no clear indicator of anything wrong.
- Some similarly colored wires; do make sure to tag which is which.
Nespresso ended up accepting the machine and replacing it. I would recommend calling their support team multiple times. It took around 30 minutes of live troubleshooting with their staff over Nespresso’s video call, where they walk you through pressing various combinations of the button to the beat of different songs and at random points unplugging the machine. I had to go through the steps with 2 team members, despite the first indicating that they had logged all the debugging steps we took. Curiously, the sound on the video would not work, so I had to write notes in response on the video call whenever the video was enabled.
I had to download an additional Nespresso application; somehow we live in a world where a coffee machine has multiple mobile applications (Nespresso and Nespresso Smart). I geniunely took time on the call to make sure that I was not being duped into downloading malware. This second application apparently provided better debugging than the first; spoilers, it was not helpful.
We than had to ship it out; they provided a shipping label. I anticipated a note inquiring about the 2 missing screws sitting on my desk that I never figured out where to put back in. After about 2 months I called back as we received no new Nespresso machine; it turned out it had arrived to Nespresso more than a month ago, but that is not enough: the customer service person told me we were supposed to call Nespresso once the machine had arrived, then they would send the new machine - we weren’t aware of this and it is not documented on their emails, but 4 days later the new machine did arrive.
The tutorials I followed from YouTube that I would recommend:
- Nespresso Vertuo Next – Full Disassembly, Deep Clean & FIX for Not Brewing / Red & Orange Light was the key video I followed. Goes a bit quick in parts, but this was essential, so thanks to this person.
- How to fix your Nespresso vertuo next coffee machine (blink Orange 2x) is what I initially tried prior to disassembling the entire machine.
- Repair and Unnecessary Reverse-Engineering of a Nespresso Vertuo Next Coffee Machine (or 2) was not extremely helpful for my use case, but worth a check.