[tormeh]

Honestly the answer to the appliance problem is to just buy Miele. I'm not really a huge fan, because you do pay a lot for the brand and they're not always as technologically advanced as, for example, Siemens, but you do get a long warranty and high quality.

[michaelt]

My father has sensitive skin, so my parents wanted a washing machine with excellent rinse performance. They consulted independent reviews, and brought an £800 ($1000) Miele washing machine which was reviewed as having good rinse performance.

Except it didn't. The rinse performance was mediocre, even with all the 'extra rinse' settings enabled. After several engineer call outs, they returned it and brought a £450 ($580) Bosch instead. The rinse performance was still mediocre, but at least they hadn't wasted so much money.

Later, I learned that the reviewers had dropped their rinse performance standards, because modern water- and energy-efficient washing machines couldn't perform and they didn't want to publish a review that panned every single machine.

My point is: Buying a Miele isn't a silver bullet.

[muro]

The apartment we rent has Miele appliances. Recently, a plastic screw widget broke in the range hood. I tried to repair it myself, as it looked simple to change, however was just out of reach and I couldn't figure out how to take the side off. It was CHF350 ($350) for the hour we had the technician over. Maybe they don't break often, but when they do...

[icebraining]

That's my experience with them as well. We got three 10-year-old machines (clothes washer, drier and dishwasher), and they all lasted 10-15 years more with minimal problems, but when a problem did arise, just getting an official Miele rep to look at it was damn expensive, and the estimate to fix it was the cost of a new mid-range machine.

Luckily we found an non-affiliated technician who was much cheaper and got the part from an old machine for a small fraction of the cost.

[drewg123]

We have a fancy Miele dishswasher in our current house, which was installed by the previous owners. This is the most unreliable dishwasher I've ever seen. It fails at least once per year, with a new thing every time. There is only one repair shop in our area that will service Miele, and they are backed up weeks sometimes.

Our old house had a cheap, builder-grade GE dishwasher. We lived there for 10 years, and it never failed.

[cr0sh]

> Our old house had a cheap, builder-grade GE dishwasher. We lived there for 10 years, and it never failed.

The fewer bells-and-whistles, the longer it will last.

We bought our house - pre-owned, built in 1973. We wanted block construction (not stick frame, chicken wire, styrofoam and stucco), copper plumbing and wiring, and no HOA (because I want to be able to wrench on my cars out front while having a beer, and leave them up on jackstands temporarily as needed, without some busybody measuring the height of my lawn). We decided to (mostly) buy pre-owned appliances while we were at it.

So we got this "package" of a washer, dryer and refrigerator from a local used appliance store. Nothing fancy about any of it. Of all of them, the washer died first after about 12 years (started to leak, probably could've been repaired, but it had already been repaired once before). The dryer is still running strong (15 years), the fridge works fine, but the water and ice-maker no longer work (not really worth repairing either, since we didn't use them much). Our washer at the time we bought a "builder special" - same with the range. The washer died about a year back (14 years) - can't recall why. But we were re-doing our kitchen, so we decided "why not" and got a new one (also got a new sink - hand-hammered copper, and I have no clue how much it cost because my wife paid for it).

The range is still going strong, although we've had to replace the heating element in the oven. That's about 15 years old too. We'll probably keep repairing it, because it is dead simple to do, plus it has actual electric burners (not that flat-top junk), which is something you can't seem to find any more, even at the budget end (when we bought it, it was the budget end itself, and the only one that had that feature).

If I really had my way, I'd get my wife a restored O'Keefe-Merritt Grillevator, but our neighborhood doesn't have gas, and to get it run is so expensive (nearest line is about a quarter-mile away at the end of our block), it'd be cheaper to move.

[falsedan]

> that flat-top junk

Recently we had to stay in a series of short-term lets: every flat-top electric range was hot garbage. Turning on the elements for more than 10 minutes caused the electronic controls to flake out & not recognise fingerpresses, so we couldn't turn off a burner without disconnecting the whole unit from mains.

[fastbeef]

An even better tactic, if applicable in your area is to buy used Miele appliances. All my appliances at home are Miele, all used from the local Craigslist equivalent. I usually pay 70%-90% off the sticker price because people are stupid when the remodel kitchens and bathrooms - "everything else is new, we should have a new dishwasher as well!".

Do I get the warranty transferred? No. Do I care? Not in the slightest. Even if something breaks after a year I just buy a new used one and still come out ahead. The cost of transportation and looking it up is the same as for a new appliance.