They have changed the position and style of those in the new units most likely to save costs. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell us all how these are actually an improvement over prior generations. You probably have a unit witha plastic bottom, yes? That is supposedly an improvement too.

In my opinion Bosch is whoreing out their DW name in effort to maintain the short term bottom line. Cutting costs and quality almost always leads to disaster. It will bite them in the long term.

With the exception of their lone German made offering one would be best to stay away from Bosch DW's these days.

All one needs to do feel the new product, it is lighter thiner, and more tinny sounding.

Oh good lord, antss ... please, for the love of god, shut up! Aren't you tired of the evangelism? It sure is getting tiring reading it. Nowadays, if there's a Bosch/Miele post, I know the formula exactly without even getting past the first post: Someone with a Miele has a problem, you're going to respond with an angry "bad installer" / "inappropriate operating parameters to the unit" tirade or else give up and give the "well, it was a Friday build. Everyone can have issues. Doesn't mean they're not outstanding".
Someone with a Bosch problem: "Bosch advertises"/"bad componentry"/"poor pumps/motor" (and my personal opinion to that one: BS!) or now, "bad tin". Seriously. Shut up. You've gotten to the point where you're producing blather - like this time.
You can't counter a problem which defies physics with "thinner/lighter" nonsense.

Davad, Does the dispenser pop open easily enough in the vertical position if you try it yourself? IOW, does the spring mechanism work alright? If so, I'll bet there is something about the loading or the configuration that is impeding that door opening all the way. Basically, if that soap compartment cover opens up with the DW door shut, unless the gravity field changes in your house, gravity alone should drop all the soap out of the compartment. If the soap is getting wet but staying in the compartment, it seems that *something* is impeding the soap compartment cover from opening up all the way.

Actually, there was someone here a few months ago with a similar story and a similar finding. They realized that a certain unit with some sort of a handle was blocking the opening of the door on certain occasions.

I ran into this problem a long time ago with a Kitchen Air DW. I found if the soap dispenser had any moisture in it when loading it would clog and stay there. After I started drying it out good before adding the powder detergent I had no further problem.

Actually, in this case, I think antss is right on target. Bosch (just like Mercedes with cars) has cheapened their brand by mass-producing large numbers of low-end models to trade on their name.

Oh. So Mercedes is a budget brand now eh? Am curious when Mercedes became one - when they opened up their US factories, perchance? ;-)
(And when did we become a third world country, btw? First the breast-beating about the US' lost manufacturing and complaints about the ensuing attrition in quality from the third-world production, and then in the same breath, the derision about products that did start getting made here! I have to say, that this bit I find very amusing. "My dishwashers and vacuum-cleaners must be made in Germany but my aircrafts and computers should be made in USA". ;-) )

Either way: when you've got a problem that suggests that something about your unit is defying gravity, I'll wager that mass-production and "cheapening" isn't the driver.

I'm referring to the tendency to trot out rhetoric and dogma - and nonsensical one at that, IMO - at the slightest provocation such that they don't actually refer in any intelligible way to the problem at hand. The overall "conversation" on the thread reduces to just utter guff.

hmmmmmm! Mindstorm sure is properly named. Take a bottle of sedatives, mindstorm and call us tomorrow mornin

Gary

eandhl may have a good point about water in the detergent dispenser causing the detergent to clump up and interfere with the door's latch release mechanism.

I've experienced this once in our dishwasher. I had been loading the top rack with a couple glasses or bowls which had some water in them. That water spilled onto the opened door and into the yet unfilled dispenser. Even though I saw the water in the dispenser, I still added the detergent which somewhat floated out of the dispenser. And then when I tried to slide the door closed it would not latch.

I had to rinse the dispenser with sufficient fresh water to wash away the bits of detergent around the latch mechanism, and wipe the dispenser dry. After that a new load of detergent was added.

Now that I'm aware of the potential problem I load the dispenser first and close the door before loading the dishwasher with water filled items.

Hey Gary, Mindstorm is Lego's robotics system.
It's what I play with when I'm stressed. Unfortunately, Mindstorm'd is about as sedated as I can get. ;-)

well, you were correct in your analysis of how much help the post was---as much as mine was(Lol), if one of ny Dodges broke down , the last thing I would want would be somebody to stop, rant and rave about how bad Dodges are and then drive off, I guess I just "expected a "Smoother delivery", on your part N0 worries. The thing is to help the Op here. I usta have that same problem with my KA Superba dishwasher, unfortunately , never figgered it out.
I did put in a water softener before I bought the Miele Optima, and not had any soapy problems since---sooo maybe a possibility of Hard water the particular soap used doesn'nt like it?

Gary

Bad day strom?

Benz 's board and CEO sold out roughly 10 years ago and started economizing certain aspects of production in order to fatten the bottom line , all under the guise of kaizen. They also acquired (though termed at the time merger of equals) Chrysler to offer the masses something an and a mechanism that would broaden their balance sheet. Fast forward and quality goes down , Chrysler is a turkey and the major stake holders riot. CEO sacked, board ousted, Chrysler sold at a loss and none too soon given last year's deveopments. New team starts a quality initiative and launches a new division (Maybach) largley out of the bean counters pervue.

My point though not made very well is that if so many people have this problem its probably a design flaw. The FACT that they have redesigned that mechanism and the placement sure is curious. The old design /placement had no such epidemic. Fact is they are now placing plastic bottoms in their wash tubs, the sealing edges are now plastic welded too. This is not some space shuttle gee wiz polymer either. Turn the units over and there's now 25-50% more free space underneath. Nano technoogy at work? Making it easier to work on for techs like the wonks over at Kenmore? I wonder.

Listen, I am Miele biased when it comes to dishwashers. I'm not some Miele salesman parroting the party line. It comes from decades of personal and professional experience. I have 3 Bosch units right now as well as 3 Miele's. Yea, I know I've got a lot of DW's! They run the gammet from 10 year old entry level Bosch I got with a pied a tere, a counter top unit not available in the USA and a brand new Q1 2009 top of range. One Miele is close to 20 years old, an 18"er and the main residence is 3 years old. Miele's quality is flat out better. Costs more, but they are not selling you a bill of goods, they deliver. They also don't make a product for everyone, they tried that with their vaccum div. a few years ago and have started to go back to basics.

N.B - Asko Aesa -a competitor of Bosch and Miele have also not cheapend their offerings lately.

Re: aircraft . The reason you want American is that they make the best. Best design , best components, best technology. You don't achieve and maintain that by watering down your brand long term by cheapening content to make a few quick bucks now. Think you can get a "discount" on a Gulfstream or a Cray supercomputer? No way, even in today's market there's a wait list and you'll pay top dollar if you want one.

In our FWIW dept., I have the same Bosch DW that mrtimewise has and have tried all kinds of detergent in it from powder to half tabs. I've never had the detergent fail to completely dissolve from the reservoir. And I load the detergent just before I close the door to begin the wash cycle.

I mainly use Cascade Complete All in One powder and just eyeball the amount I put in the reservoir.

As I mentioned, in my previous post, I solved my problem by doing 2 things, replaced the KA (our really really hard water here in S calif)-probably along with the dw soap I was using, completely totalled the KA. It looked like snow inside it, and it was stainless steel inside it and an older "well made" (relatively speaking) DW.Yea we tried vinegar, cleaners, everything short of "Explosives" trying to keep the inside of that succer clean. Bathtubs, sinks etc etc were all starting to show damage from the hard water (Lime deposits). I spent $36 for installation and about $23/month for Payne Softwater company to change the tank once/month. Our bathtub looks great again, without a lotta scrubbin, Miele DW - 3 years old now, still looks new inside as does our kitchen sink and faucett.
That was the best money I ever spent and I suspects had I done it sooner the KA would not have been "Totalled"
Anyway, not sure where Op lives but symptoms sure sound similar to our experiences!!
My Dodges are 59 & 64's and have been far more reliable and less expensive to maintain,than 2 newer Mercedes I have owned---but I guess we see that a lot with cars, appliances etc etc---hard to beat "Those Oldies but Goodies"

Gary

To the original question, depending on the model you have, the machine may have alternating wash arms. If so, there could be a problem with the water flow to the upper rotating arm. This will appear as poor cleaning in the upper rack and detergent not being flushed from the dispenser.

If you are a thorough pre-rinser, you may not have noticed a cleaning problem. My suggestion is, place an upright juice glass in each upper rack corner. Let the machine run for a few minutes. Open the door, the glasses should be full. If not, you've got a water circulation problem. There could be a problem with the valve that directs water flow from one arm to another. Also, there could simply be a inlet water problem, where you are getting an incomplete charge of water. Since you machine is new, have a qualified servicer check it out. He can verify the installation of the fill and drain lines too.

The story behind Bosch moving the detergent cup up to the top of door is said to be user convenience & sound reduction. Some models have a little basket that catches the detergent tablet so as to prevent the noise from the falling tablet.

Oh and for best cleaning and drying performance with any dishwasher; use a quality enzyme detergent like Cascade or Finish tablets and rinse aid.

I've had good results in my mid-level maytag (stop-gap dw until we can re-do the kitchen)with the little cascade 3-in-one packs. Why not give those a try?

Well, I'm glad to see some posts directed to the original poster's issues.

Well, since he's been taken care of, Antss, last night I had drafted a rather long rebuttal to your post which basically kindly suggested you go boil your head. ;-)
However, in between writing it, I realized that I needed your help on a question (separate subject) so I abstained from posting it.
*grin*

Anyhow, the gist of my response basically was a self-example showing why I don't like the "A is the best/most technical. Only buy the best/most technical."
Case in point: I work at a research lab. Aside from our research, one of the things we do is build some particular extremely precise sensors for certain aerospace vehicles (no need to get into which ones). These are The Very Best such instruments you could get anywhere (or not get. More on that later). Super-precise, radiation hard, fast initialization, everything. This is not parroting a company line. This is fact. Our only customer is a certain body in the US government.
Now, these devices are extremely expensive. They are very expensive and the only reason we (a lab) still fabricate them is that, aside from the complexity to provide the necessary sensor sensitivity & precision & robustness, the demand for such inordinately high precision instruments is extremely low (single digit orders of such devices every few years) making it not very compelling for the major aero-astro companies to produce.

So, for these one-off sorts of builds, we continue to fabricate these when the need arises.
Now, we are a lab, and while we have fabrication facilities for prototyping high-precision devices, we don't have manufacturing facilities. So, these systems are VERY expensive and will continue to remain so. Both because of the precision called for as well as the fact that no manufacturing principles can be applied to improve the efficiencies of production.

OK. So we make the absolute best of such systems. And we're known for it. Still, that doesnt make what Honeywell and NG produce as the industry leaders in that market at some fraction of the performance and a fraction of the cost, junk or crap because it is "mass produced". In fact, when we get an inquiry from any other division of the govt. about these sensors, we scratch our heads and ask why they think they need such uber-precision. For more than 90% of the projects that we work on at my lab *we* have no use for our super-precise devices and we rely on the "lesser" products.
And it is true that, by performance, compared to ours, they are a "lesser" animal. But by no means are those "lesser" items, "cheapened by production", a dismissible item. In fact, as I mentioned, >99% of the time for the world at large and >90% of our own activities, they are net superior because the performance is more than good (enough for the task required) and the savings in cost on the sensor unit means that we can afford more on other without in any way compromising on the required performance.

This has gone on long enough and I realize that a Miele DW is no lab-grade unit, but the point was to say that I have daily proof that paying blind obeisance to "The Best" product and dismissing everything else as "cheapened", "advertised", and "mass-produced" is actually being penny-wise pound foolish. IMO, the only "The Best" is associated with an associated cost function/performance index. Seldom has a performance index been cited when a "Miele / Wolf/ Subzero/ whatever is the best" defense is provided.
This is why I get & got irritated up there.

There's actually loads more to say re: comparos made up above, but I'm just going to sign off now.
Also you'll forgive me if I take your assessments about aircraft and Crays with a pinch of salt as I rather doubt you have some of the more interesting insights into these 2 worlds.

"forgive me if I take your assessments about aircraft and Crays with a pinch of salt "

not bad advice since they aren't my industries, but I do know more than most about what goes on down at the airport in Savannah, wink.

Antss
We bought a mid level Bosch Integra 6 months ago. SHX65P0 to be exact. This leaves residue on the glass ware quite often. When I check the filter, the water in there is dirty, telling me that the last rinse water was NOT clean. The top rack does not fit many dishes. I had a 10 year old Asko that died. This does not clean nearly as well as my old Asko. My MIL's 10 year old Bosch works heck of alot better than this thing.

davdad
I have had that problem only couple times. I have to make absolutely sure that there are no large items in front of the soap dispenser. Full size plate is too big. Because of this design flaw, this becomes a dishwasher "dead zone" where you can't put whatever you want there. You really have to make sure this space is clear. If there is an item as tall as the soap dispenser, the water is blocked from getting to the soap. Try that for a while and see.

I had just used Miele in Germany for 2 weeks and I loved it! I really wanted Miele but I was saving money. My big mistake!

We are having the installers come back and have them show us that they indeed put in a "high loop" drain hose installation because my DH thinks that they did not. I am hoping this solves the problem.

In the mean time, any suggestions on how I can get the dishes cleaner? Will more detergent help?

In my limited experience, I agree with antss.... I have used newer and older Bosch, as well as older Asko and new Miele. The new Bosch is a piece of C$%^. I think if the newer Bosch is working great, I am happy for that consumer. However, at the price point of the DW, I should NOT have to think about how to use it correctly. I have been using DWs for more than 1/4 of century. This Bosch is the worst by far!

Mindstorm..
BTW, in Germany, Mercedes has a line of budget cars. It is one of their budget brands. That's what you get when you rent a car, A or B series Mercedes (just like a Chevy Malibu at Hertz). Very few Germans buy Japanese or American cars, so Mercedes fills the niche of budget cars for their internal market. Mercedes is NOT a luxury brand in Germany. They have way too many small tiny cheap cars in their product line, SMART car being only one of those, to be considered a luxury brand. I would say BMW and Prosche are many notches above Mercedes in Germany without budget niche being offered to the internal consumers from BMW or Prosche. Mercedes does have a line of very large expensive cars, similar to Cadillac at GM, however. They fill the role, similar to GM in America, where they fill every product niche. There are some A and B series cars that are pretty plebian...

kaismom - you're just jumpin on the rhetoric and dogma bandwagon. :^)

BMW is also trying to appeal to a larger segment. They now have the 1 series to compete. Porsche seems to be the only one not racing to sell something to everyone. They selectively add more offerings after much research and consideration. Their SUV was a homerun while their partner in the venture's was a turkey. (VW Toureg). It was not a "budget" offering either. The new sedan is a smart gamble too. It also helps to be a fraction of the size of the other two when trying to maintain stock price or change strategic direction.

kaismom, I think your opinion will cause no small degree of consternation in Stuttgart that der Mercedes-Benz is not an oberclasse kraftfahrzeug LOL!

"Most" Euro brands make a very big range of vehicle classes to span the space. Don't know where in Germany you were but there is no dearth of lower level entries from most makers - up-market or downmarket. The bmw 1-series that antss mentioned is a lower tier car - and it has been available in Germany for a good bit. FYI The Merc A or B-class are comparable to the BMW 1-series. And I don't even know if there is an MB or Audi comp to the BMW-318ti!

Admittedly, M-Benz is almost better known around the world for their large lorries & container-trucks and truck engines than their Maybachs and McLarens but if you think MB is a budget brand with some uberclasse offerings, you're off your rocker. ;-)
As mentioned earlier, they've many of them got their lower-tiers - perhaps not Porsche though (despite that beastly Chili-pepper of theirs).
As for what you'll see as the primary people-mover, it depends on where in Germany you go.

Regarding your DW, wouldn't it make a smidge more sense to ensure that you installed it to spec before you decry it? What I do know is that my Bosch DW cleans spectacularly with very little cooperation from me re: loading, or scraping. And since I only run it every 3-4 days, the "unscraped" plates sit for a good bit. I'd be very surprised (and a bit suspicious) if your machine isn't capable of similar performance.

Either way, I think I finally see the errors I've been making re: opinions on GW-Appliance pages. You guys' debate isn't about performance ... it is about exclusivity! No wonder the derision about some of these brands. It has taken me ages to learn this and the penny only just dropped for me. Since I care only for the former and couldn't care a flying fig about the latter, I'll leave you folks to your assessments.

BTW, seeing as I've got a couple of the 3-series, I rather prefer to think of BMW as a maker of "performance cars" thank you very much, rather than a luxury one. Cheers! ;-)

Wow, this has been a real learning experience. I now feel qualified to make a better decision on purchasing all appliances, new cars and even sensitive radiation dectecting devices and all because I'm experiencing the same problem; my soap dispenser sometimes doesn't dispense.
The advice from this particular question (davdad) really has been helpful. It has made me consider what's at work opening this dispenser. I will make sure that nothing obstructs the dispenser and check all the other parts that do "activate" the door.
Thanks to all of you I have now a cleaner filter and a thorough knowledge of how to take the door off and replace this thing if I need to.
Honestly I enjoyed reading all the hoopla over this annoying malfunction.

To Mojavean and Dixiedarlin:

I have the same problem as the original writer here.

I have cleaned out a ton of pink crud from the filter area. Then discovered upper arm not spinning. (kept opening to find it in same spot....soap tab still stuck in compartment) Figured out that lower arm comes out easily and managed to clean gunk out of that too.

Would like to know more about this gray plastic pipe that Mojavean mentioned..and I quote:

"Also, check the supply line to the upper spray arm. It emerges from a high pressure port on the bottom of the machine behind the filter screen. If the gray plastic pipe has popped loose"

I think we're on to something here. I removed the screen, the filter, the lower arm. Still don't see a gray pipe.

Can anyone offer more help?

(and no Mercedes advice please)

SUE

They are talking about the gray pipe that goes up the back wall inside the d/w.

Gray plastic pipe looks intact. I took off upper arm too and cleaned well. Got lots of stuff out. During operation (when I open door) I see water pouring out all holes in upper arm. But still no rotation of upper arm. Dang it. I was hopeful.

Arm Spins easily when pushed. tried placing rack in both high & low positions. Still no rotation.

Maybe time to give in and call repair person. Boo hoo.

This forum has been great though. I learned a lot. Can't thank you enough.