Where have all the Senseo pods gone?

January 26, 2019 6:48 PM

We have a Senseo from c. 2004(?) that is still limping along. All along I've bought pods for it from Amazon because Amazon had the best price and variety available. But there were other sources too. (To be clear, I've always only bought Senseo brand pods, because they tasted best to me. I'm not interested in third party suppliers just yet.). Now the price of Senseo pods has shot up on Amazon, we can't get all the varieties we used to, and I can't find another supplier. What happened and where can we buy the pods?

The loss of our supply seemed to coincide with re-release of the instrument from Philips...which seems even odder. Where are people buying pods for the *new* machines?

[Please don't suggest a Keurig or other replacement . I guess we will look into something else eventually but I loved the Senseo and I really want to understand what has happened to the Senseo supply....]

posted by Tandem Affinity to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

My parents were Senseo purists and I feel like it was quite some time ago (8 years, perhaps?) that they started to notice the Senseo pods being much more difficult to find. It reached a point where they could only get them on Amazon, where they'd buy them in bulk; then they started buying the Senseo DIY pods and filling them up themselves with ground coffee from elsewhere. My parents were pretty resistant to getting a Keurig but eventually gave in and did it because it was getting to be too difficult for them to find even the refillable Senseo pods. And my Dad's a pretty aggressive online shopper, so if he gave up, that's a strong sign (to me) that you just can't find the things for reasonable prices anymore. I see someone selling four (4) 18-packs on Amazon for nearly $50. Talk about a King's ransom. Coffeeforless.com has them for $7.99. It's been years since I have seen them in a US brick and mortar grocery store.
posted by nightrecordings at 8:03 PM on January 26, 2019

Sara Lee discontinued sales (apart from "online outlets") in 2012, and it looks like Amazon is the chosen online outlet in 2019 at a pretty high premium. You might be better off calling a European seller and seeing if they'd be willing to ship internationally, or ordering from Amazon.co.uk.
posted by holgate at 8:35 PM on January 26, 2019

I'm seeing something called a 'Coffeeduck', that lets you fill it with preground coffee, put it in the Senseo machine, and then make your coffee. The advantage is that it can be cleaned out and reused.

There seem to be different coffeeducks for different models of the Senseo available on Amazon; hopefully you'll find a compatible one. Coffeeduck for the Senseo Classic HD7810 7812
posted by spinifex23 at 12:05 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you have a Dutch foods and imports shop in your area, perhaps give them a try. Our local one has heaps of Sense pods.
posted by area.man at 2:08 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

I bought a Coffeeduck for an ex when we couldn't find any Senseo pods, and it worked very well as a DIY solution.
posted by sockermom at 3:52 AM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Our office has a Newco pod coffee machine and the pods that go in there look suspiciously similar to Senseo, and after 10 seconds of searching it looks like they're actually compatible.

If you search on that name it looks like you can find lots of pods in bulk, like this.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:30 AM on January 27, 2019

We have been ordering the pods from Amazon, the Melitta brand (a very respectable European coffee brand), 36 bucks for 108 pods.
posted by monospace at 10:49 PM on January 28, 2019

Response by poster: Welp, the Senseo pods have returned to Amazon, in new packaging and just slightly more expensive. The paper of the pods seems a little different too. Our theory is that Dougwe Eberts revamped the look for the recent re-release of the machine in the US, maybe changed amazon distributors, and this caused a temporary interruption in supply. Thanks to all for your answers!
posted by Tandem Affinity at 6:30 PM on March 9, 2019