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…nor is there any doubt about it.
Miele are now using sealed plastic tanks in many machines, including ones that retail for over £1000!!!
Mental. Just absolutely mental.
K.
well I hope the bearing and seal system is better than Hotpoint otherwise they will get scrapped after 5 years
Dave
You’d hope.
But nobody will replace a tank in one, I expect, as my eyes water just thinking what Miele will charge for a complete tank. The bits they sell are bad enough!
K.
well if you want bearing kit its about £700 so wont make a lot of difference if the bearings fail.
just hoping they use a really good seal and not one for 50p from ChinaDave
A quick scan through parts diagrams on Miele’s MSD system reveals that Miele started making washing machines with sealed tubs in 2019, and they are now fitted to all Miele entry level machines priced up to around £1000 (though I expect significantly cheaper from online retailers).
The surprise to me is that Miele don’t list replacement tubs for these machines as spare parts.
As electrofix suggests, one of this really matters if the tubs are well made, incorporating durable bearing seals. Miele’s bearing kit for current stainless steel tubbed machines is priced £229 including VAT, which certainly appears to be of top quality:
The point to me is, these are wear-and-tear components that will inevitably fail and they have been rendered irreplaceable other than by a very expensive sealed unit if it’s even available.
Effectively forcing a replacement (irrespective of the age) of the machine as repair won’t be economically viable. Or, it’s unavailable. Either way, it’s not good news for owners/buyers.
And that’s a deliberate choice of the maker that should, in my opinion, be information that is freely available to consumers so they can make an informed decision on what to buy.
K.
Our Miele W320 washing machine has been extremely reliable over the 23 years we have owned it, with a family of 5 over most of that period.
Admittedly, one of the last of the 5 kg drum machines with fully stainless steel tub, drum and spider.
Parts replaced are door seal (at 1 year, under guarantee), suspension dampers (at around 18 years of age) and drain pump (last year).
So still on the original drum, motor brushes, heater, springs, hoses, electrical parts, electronics, belt, dispenser, door parts, etc.
And it’s had some beating. I wish I knew how to download the running time log but I bet it has far exceeded Miele’s 20 year (10,000 hour) durability target.
Looking on Miele spares even the WQ1000 at over 2k has a sealed tank. There is no part number available, I guess it’s price prohibited . 😮
Don
To me, that’s borderline criminal.
Think on it this way as an analogy….
If you bought a car or van and you got a ways down the road (see what I did there) with it and let’s say it’s six years old but you use it more than most so it’s got 150K miles on it and the crankshaft goes (random example) but you find you can’t buy that, say £300 part but you have to buy a £7K complete engine and the vehicle is worth circa £12K, how p1$$ed off are you gonna be?
Or if you’re not allowed to buy the part/s to repair it at all, what will you do then?
Now imagine that car/van is a Mercedes and you paid over the odds to buy that brand as it was “quality”, supposedly more durable than others and would last longer. That’d only p1$$ you off even more, might even tip you over the edge with outrage as you, in your head, paid more only to get ripped off worse.
But what can you do, at that point you’ve no comeback at all and the only choices you have are to scrap it or splurge on the stupidly expensive repair, if you even can repair it.
Thing is, you’ll never buy from that brand again, regardless of who it is and you’ll tell all and sundry at every opportunity you get not to buy from these crooks as, that is how most will view that kind of thing.
That’s before we even get into the “planned obsolescence” stuff, much of which I think are conspiracy theories for the most part. It’s more stupidity than design if you ask me.
Regardless, this is why the Right to Repair stuff is vitally important and it doesn’t just save owners from all that, it could save brands/makers from shooting themselves in the foot as often times I honestly don’t think they see how ludicrous this is or how damaging it is to them.
Right now, the problem we have in this industry is that they’re largely all doing the same silly things from the bottom to the top of the market so from a punter’s perspective, does it matter what you buy… may as well just buy cheap crap and junk it after a few years.
K.
The WQ1000 has a sealed stainless steel tank, not plastic. And it is not available as a spare part. Miele have not provided a tub repair service for many years, presumably as their charge for parts and labour would be prohibitive. That being so, I guess from their viewpoint, there is no logical reason to make replacement tubs available as spare parts.
For me this has always been a non-issue. In 18 years of trading, I can probably count the number of split tub repairs I carried out an all brands with the fingers of two hands. The number of sealed tub replacements was probably double that. In most cases of drum failure, pricing in the cost of parts and my labour time, there was simply no way I could make the repair cost-effective.
its a shame you have only got to look at old machines and see the ease some manufacturers made bearing access
the ones that spring to mind where the zanussi 929 & 626 ( I think) and old AEG which has a removable bearing spider so you could change bearing without tub removal provided shaft was ok
miele on the othere hand was a compete strip dowm. have never done one but it looked like a complete nightmareDave
I only saw one Miele washing machine with bearing failure, out of likely 200-300 I worked on, which could suggest the “nightmare” strip down may be a function of a more durable construction.
You can probably tell I am a fan of Miele. We have 8 Miele appliances, 3 of which are around 23 years old, the others about 8. The quality of construction, even on the more recent machines, far exceeds any other brands I have seen or worked on
stratfordgirl wrote:I only saw one Miele washing machine with bearing failure, out of likely 200-300 I worked on, which could suggest the “nightmare” strip down may be a function of a more durable construction.
You can probably tell I am a fan of Miele. We have 8 Miele appliances, 3 of which are around 23 years old, the others about 8. The quality of construction, even on the more recent machines, far exceeds any other brands I have seen or worked on
agree with you about miele
bought a used on with a fault of ebay 15 years ago and its still goingneed new shocks so may fit them this weekend before it blows the fuse on the pcb
Dave
The timer on my mum’s 38 year old Miele T366 tumble dryer finally lost the ability to drive the motor this year. I initially recommended she bought the best of the literally only a handful of vented dryer models still on the market – an Indesit-branded Beko priced £249.
However, a quick search on ebay came up with an effectively as-new 20-year old Miele vented dryer nearby priced around £100 – a much better buy. A detailed clean-up outside is all that was needed. Virtually dust-free inside. As a bonus, it matches the 20 year old Miele washing machine sitting beside it
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