UMRP. No discounts at all available.

As Sophie mentioned, some brands like Miele, Wolf/Subzero, and Gaggenau impose UMRP, Unilateral Manufacturers Retail Price. That means no discounting, and no matter where you buy it, the price will be the same, or perhaps you might find regional differences of $100. Some appliance retailers will give incentives when selling you UMRP brands by other means: e.g., by discounting other brand appliances you might be buying at the same time, or throwing in non-cash incentives like free delivery and installation. Or, you can find UMRP brand appliances at lower prices when they are returns, or a discontinued model, or scratched/dented.

Jennair you mentioned is a Whirlpool brand and not UMRP. You can find all kinds of discounts, as well as Black Friday deals, Christmas deals, etc. on the several Whirlpool brands. Thermador is part of Bosch/Gaggenau, and I am not sure whether Thermador falls under UMRP or not. Thermador has well-advertised package discounts when you buy an entire suite of all-Thermador, but they are costly packages. Miele most definitely has UMRP.

There's also no such thing really as "builders pricing", or the similarly-named "contractors discount". For non-UMRP brands, you almost always get better prices by going to stores and negotiating directly than you can by going through a contractor or builder.

When you are at a store and the salesperson tells you the price is with a "builders discount", s/he just means, well, discount. Putting the word "builders" in front of the word "discount" makes the buyer feel the deal is more special.

We do not do a lot of cooking so we are looking for “best” to mean just actually works as advertised and does not cause us a lot of problems. We do not need appliances with a lot of components because we do not do specialty baking/cooking or much baking/cooking at all. But we would like good quality and maybe some features so better for resale in a few years or so. Thanks!

I recently bought 3 GE Monogram appliances (one free with mfg promo). A search through online and local retailer websites showed approximately the same pricing (+/- $100). A trip to one local retailer did not deviate from this pricing, which was still below MSRP. A trip to a second local retailer was more fruitful. They knew we had shopped with retailer #1 and asked if we were working with a contractor. I said yes and they proceeded to ask if they had a bonafide website or other way of verifying their existence. I was then offered "contractor's pricing" which was significantly lower than any price I have seen anywhere. As an example: 48" range MSRP $9900. Online and local quoted price $8900. Contractor price: $8000.

So whether "contractor" pricing is real or not, I will take the added discount which is something I would not have gotten had I not provided contractor information.

Just let the manufacturer get wind of that and they get their privileges to sell revoked. They do not mess around with those who violate UMRP. Especially now since the Chinese mafia/government owns them. Very serious business.

If you don’t cook, and just want a show kitchen, then get whatever shiny sparkley set appeals to your eyes. You get zero bump for appliances at resale. You only get dinged if you have Maytag in a neighborhood of SubZeros.

Real cooks want best in class for their needs. They don’t do matched sets. Ever.