General Enquiries And Questions

Hi all. My Indesit DI61 will soon die a horrible death as it well deserves. I have had nothing but problems with it. Anyhow, I will be looking out for a new A-rated integrated unit.

Ideally I'd aim to spend £300-£400 or thereabouts and I'd really appreciate the opinion of those more knowledgeable than myself.

Bosch are good, the more expensive £400 end (The ones made in Germany).

If you could run to it Miele are the VERY best!

HTH

Oliver

'I am not a washer engineer' Oliver..July 4th 2009.

The current range of integrated dishwashers can most kindly be described as a minefield. You absolutely will get what you are prepared to pay for.

HWL has mentioned the Bosch machines - the top of the range NEFF badged machines are a good bet, decent quality and spec with a good warranty. The basic spec models are not. The plastic cavity base/stainless top has leakage problems which are unresolved as far as we currently know.

The other two major players are Whirlpool and Electrolux Group.

Whirlpool machines have consistently suffered from circulation pump problems; the current generation of machines has the heater integral with the pump, rendering the repair no longer cost effective.

Lux Group stuff isn't bad - brands are Electrolux, Zanussi, Tricity Bendix and AEG. You pay more for AEG and less for Tricity Bendix - however, they are all basically the same machine and suffer from annoying problems about 3 years in.

Miele. The independents have issues with Miele. There is no doubting the superb build quality of their appliances and the overall general reliability. You are however tied to Miele Service forever due to their complete intransigence about releasing any sort of technical information or support to the independent repairers. Combine that with a pricing policy on spares parts which can only be described as larcenous and you have a very expensive liabilty some years down the line.

Oh - SMEG. Good value, stylish machines; unfortunately a triumph of style over substance. Bit like owning a Ferrari - brilliant whilst it works, can be a complete cow when it doesn't.

To fit your budget, you're looking at the Lux Group stuff. Personally, I'd find another £100 and go with NEFF

AND - if you don't recognise the brand name, don't buy it. Kenwood make food mixers. Proline and Matsui are brand names for imported cheap Chinese tat. Why are Haier even allowed to sell in the UK? There are plenty of others........

HTH,
Penguin45.

Ah, the integrated marketplace, such a joy.

You have, at the top, Miele and that's about it currently. With the pitfalls that Penguin points out, good machines, shame about the restrictions.

You have BSH Group, which is Bosch, Neff & Siemens with, pretty much, the same things with different badges on them if you look closely.

You have the mainstream Electrolux and Whirlpool machines. Smeg sits here IMO, at best.

Below that you have everything else to which you should take a very long bargepole to make sure you stay far enough away from it.

What you have to realise is that the integrated appliance market isn't what we'd call large, certainly much smaller that the freestanding market and due to the volumes required to produce, many brands just buy in someone else's machines and plonk their name on it.

Both Electrolux and Whirlpool as well as, to a degree, BSH, will sell you a load of appliances if you want to buy enough and re-badge it for you. So a lot of the mid market stuff is all the same.

All the cheap stuff is almost always either Haier or Midea from China which, if they were on fire, aren't worth wasting the water on to extinguish the flames.

It cracks me up when we get people asking for parts and telling us that the salesman told them that their Necht, CDA, Homark, Teka, Tecnik and so on are really Bosch with another badge on them. We laugh a bit as, they're not and really, £300 or more than 50% cheaper than the real deal?

Let me put it this way, my own service company will not entertain the word "recall" in respect of any Chinese produced appliance and we will not take them on where it's the customer that's paying due to the stupid recall rate. It's not really recalls, it's just another failure on them, usually within 6 months.

We'll sell parts for them on here but, we hate doing it as we really don't see the point in throwing good money after bad. But I guess we have to really, even if we don't like it much.

My advice is to follow the advice given, invest in something decent or as decent as you can afford. Ignore this sound advice at your peril.

HTH

K.

Was that you Chris!!!! Should it be my new signature!!!!!

All the best

Oliver

Thanks for the info guys. Much appreciated. I'll get looking.