Only buy Miele’s warranty. Thirf party warranties wont actually fix this machine. Heat Pump dryers are essentially a refridgerator run in reverse. All parts need to come from Miele. Miele’s extended warranty price is not out of line. A single service call with parts will cost more than the cost of the warranty.

You also have the benefit of going to Miele for all calls. Imagine having to work with a third party and act as a go between.

There are no gotchas in Miele’s warranty. There is a refund for unused portion if you want to back out. The only dowside with Miele right now is extended time to get some parts.

Thanks for the perspective. I suspect you're right about 3rd party warranties not really fixing the machine. We have an induction cooktop that blew a power board - fortunately one of the rare times I had a warranty from Squaretrade due to a promo. They told us not to spend more than 50% of the original purchase price - above that, they'd just issue a refund. OTOH they were extremely fast - we had a service authorization within a day of reporting the issue.

I suspect that Miele is not the only one with parts supply chain problems, but that hasn't been our only problem. Their online service tool can't book service in our area, and it took forever to get that coordinated by phone/email. At least half a dozen times when I called, the line simply went dead after a while. When they screwed up the service order, failing to mark it as a warranty job, I had to contact them 4 times to get it fixed. It literally took 30 days from first contact just to get parts ordered.

Miele had a management shakeup in the USA a couple years back. The new CEO is a dickwad. No other way to say that. Service used to be outstanding. This new CEO fired a lot of the in house staff, many more quit. They then setup call centers overseas for residential aplliances. Their professional service line is still in house. If you call the main number in Princeton, NJ and select the professional/commercial division skmeone will answer with a ”Hello, how can i help you.” They are not the clueless idiots from overseas.

That said, if you call in the morning, eastern time, you have a good chance of getting someone stateside. Get a case number from this person and just be a pain in the ass until your problem os resolved. It usually works for me.

Miele’s online service booking option stopped working after the management change a couple years ago. My guess is that this cost them more money to actually have it function and they have not bothered to remove it from the website.

Just be persistent. Third party warranties are just insurance policies, as you have seen. If they can’t/won’t fix theybjust gove younypur money back.

Service is not just a "nice to have" but super important for any appliance you purchase of any brand. The service experiences that have been mentioned here, while anecdotal, do not bode well for consumers who are spending often super levels of $$$$ on this brand. While the prices are in the premium category, the service reputation does not match this. Even lower priced brands should provide better service. For a 'luxury' brand like this, poor service is unforgivable. Speaking of service, I always advise clients to consider what options for service exist in the area they live in no matter the brand. A dead luxury appliance is as useless as a bottom tier brand if you cannot get it maintained/repaired.

In the heat pump dryer space, there aren't a lot of options. LG and Samsung by most accounts have no service to speak of. As far as I can tell, you pray that it works and throw it away if it doesn't. Whirlpool has a big network, but not great reputations on the machines. That leaves only Bosch, which wasn't available last year.

I think long term parts availability will really be the key test. If it breaks again in 5 years will I have to chuck it, like I did with my Kenmore (=Electrolux) induction cooktop? I hope not.

I think the bigger wuestion will be what it will cost to fix out of warranty. Miele will have parts. The mechanical design will be around. If a compressor fails on the sealed system it will be like a fridge. Probably $400-500. depending which model you purchased that could be 1/4 to half oc replacement cost. Then it comes down to how many hours are on the clock.

I buy Miele because our family puts more than 10k hours on within 5 years. 10k hours being the design life of the appliance. If it lasts longer than that were money ahead. Last model washer/dryer had 15k hours when bearings went out.

What part failed on your T1?

It would definitely be very expensive out of warranty. Our local tech (who's very good) thought it would be roughly the cost of a new machine in total.

The challenge is that we don't have a definitive diagnosis. The machine won't dry, and heat is very low (<25C), but it doesn't throw any fault codes. (The home office techs were convinced it was us - too much soap, or not enough spin speed.) So basically he'll be doing experimental replacement until it works, which isn't viable if you're paying for parts. The presumption is that the compressor assembly is the problem, and it's more like $800 as I recall. It's also an epic job - basically the whole machine has to come apart and be rebuilt on the base.

Argh, they just moved the delivery date for the parts back another week.

Are you working with a Miele employed tech or an authorized repair shop. The latter being general repair shops. I have found that one of these third party places in my area LIES to me about parts not being shipped. I have called Miele and they have looked up the ticket and parts were not even ordered by the third party. Miele called them, while I was on hold, and arranged parts to be sent to them. I think some of these third party service companies are more money collectors than they are repair techs.

Call Miele directly with your repair order number and have the person on the phone check to see if your parts have been shipped. I am wondering if they have even been ordered? I have had to do this in the past. Miele offered to ship the parts directly to me and then dispatch the repair tech once I had the parts.

I assume we're working with a Miele tech, but I'm actually not sure. We had made rather elaborate prep for the delivery, that wouldn't have been worth faking. The parts can't ship directly here because the freight trucks are too big to get up the road, so it was going to the dealers warehouse (not the same as the repair guy). But I'll certainly check if we don't have it next week.

Definitely checking now. They just pushed the date out another week.

Since I heard this first from the local guy, it sounds more like Miele is just issuing aspirational ship dates, then moving them back when they fail to meet them.

This is day 59 with no dryer. I'd start scratching marks on the wall to mark the passage of time, but really we've adapted to hanging the laundry.

Quite the post Luna. I just stumbled across this thread...

It depends. I get it from my dealer...as he used to offer 10 years...a few years back, it was changed to 8 Years Max. It's a steal of a deal for ME on deee-zin-er appliances. Warranty may/should cost more than manuf. but I am getting 8 years. Anyhow, my dealer if I ever needed services against the purchased warranty, I have received factory direct tech visits. YMMV on 3rd party warranties. But a single service call, between the diag fee or the -part- for the repair fee usually will always pay for itself on dee-ziner appliances....

My impression is that this one service call will cost about as much as the entire machine, which is about 4x the cost of the 5-year extended warranty. I bought the Miele warranty, but right now I'm pretty unhappy, because my extended warranty period is ticking away while the machine is nonfunctional and they're unable to quote a firm date for parts delivery. They refuse to extend the warranty period, even though I had to buy the warranty while the machine was down for repairs. Basically this is fraud, but they have me between a rock and a hard place.

Tom -

While I agree a factory tech is preferred for the machine you have....it's not necessarily the *best*....really boils down to the person who works on it.

Awhile back when my machine was out of warranty, I did a repair on my Miele washer. When I broke it down, etc, I found a cracked plastic. trim Most likly due to installer using a *cordless drill* to put it back on a previous service call. This was circa...about 2 years after the service call did I discover this. I did call Miele, explained to them my discovery and fwiw, they did send me a new replacement part due to my findings.

Good point. In our case, this remains to be seen. The local tech hasn't been able to do anything, because we don't have parts. I think he's frustrated too, because he went to the trouble of making somewhat complicated freight dropoff arrangements, but Miele keeps moving the delivery date back. The proposed surgery is pretty extensive, so hopefully he'll torque things gently!

The concept of calling Miele and getting satisfaction on a query is outside my experience. Maybe someday ...

Yet another delay. Parts delivery originally 4/25, then 5/4, then 5/11, then 5/17, now 5/23. Obviously they're just moving it back a week at a time.

Who is telling you the date is moved back? Is it Miele or the servicing company?

The service guy. Miele won't tell me anything. They claim they can't, which may be true for call center people - but obviously somewhere in the org there must be someone who knows.

Did you get a ticket number from Miele? If you have that you just call and explain that you want a status update on parts for the ticket number. That is what I do.

I do have a work order #, but they categorically deny having any visibility of the parts order chain. That's obviously ludicrous - someone must! The local guy figures parts are on a boat from Germany and will show up eventually, but in the meantime they're just going to blow smoke. We'll find out on the 23rd if parts really arrive, but since we don't have a tracking number I predict they'll just move the date to the 30th.

Progress. Miele has agreed to replace the machine. This now complicates the warranty, because my new coverage is tied to the serial # of the old machine, but hopefully there's a solution for that.

Indeed, they did perform. There was a little confusion about the destination of the machine at the appliance warehouse, but it's delivered & installed. Miele reissued my newly-purchased warranty on the old machine for the new machine, so I'm whole on that front. The silver lining is that 90 days offline reacquainted us with hanging the laundry to dry, which is certainly a greener approach.