Miele is the BEST domestic appliance brand at Which? awards

Washerhelp
#2. November 8th, 2008, at 8:20 PM.

Hello Bob: This is difficult because I’m not directly affiliated with Miele but as an independent reviewer I have to say it’s not really fair to say a company is to be totally avoided, and that they do not back up their products because of an individual negative experience – although negative experiences should be reported. Clearly you have reason to be disappointed because of your experience but we don’t know enough facts to judge how balanced a view it is or how much if any is down to the dealer or Miele disputing something. It’s hard to imagine any company, even the poor ones would promise repairs 4 times and just not turn up without there being some reason somewhere.

No manufacturer is perfect, and even the best can have a situation go badly wrong from time to time but it can’t mean that because there are examples of things going wrong it proves the opposite of all the awards.

No matter what went wrong in your case Miele have a reputation for way above average service. On August 14th there was another article in the ERT reporting that Miele have won the “Nationwide Domestic & General Total Excellence and Quality award for 2008. ( Miele win TEQ award 2008 )

It says this is the sixth time they’ve won it and that more than 425,000 surveys were distributed to customers who had received an appliance repair within the last 12 months. Miele was voted top for aftersales with a score of over 90%.

The TEQ awards are in their 11th year and are claimed to be the largest independent surveys of repair service in the UK.

I can understand frustration at seeing a company win lots of good service awards to someone who’s fallen out with them but the awards don’t claim to go to only perfect companies that never get anything wrong.

Washerhelp
#4. November 20th, 2008, at 3:43 PM.

At the risk of being seen as an apologist for Miele I have to say that their support can’t be appalling if they are winning award after award for their customer service. However I can happily accept that you personally have found their support appalling.

Clearly you’ve had issues with them and are not happy at all. The issue I have though is in the assertion that any single incident or even a certain percentage of incidents where things go wrong proves that a company is rubbish. Every single company in the world will have thousands of examples where customers have been very dissatisfied for one reason or another and exceptions don’t dispprove the experience of the majority.

However, when boasting about these awards for promotional purposes or when these awards are reported by others such as myself they do inevitably leave themselves open to criticism by anyone who has found the service to be unsatisfactory and that’s fair enough. If I’d had bad experience with a company and saw they’d won an award for good service I’d probably post my protestations too.

The offer of £50 worth of accessories seems a decent one to me but I can sympathise with your point of view that the accessories are not much use unless you get the microwave fixed. Assuming that it will be fixed eventually though means this attitude is unnecessarily because it is only temporarily broken. However, if you have been waiting for a month already I can imagine you starting to doubt if it will get fixed or maybe that you have a mind to try to get a refund and try something else in which case the accessories would be useless

I can only assume the part required is just not in stock even in Germany. Either that or the order could be held up because they only order from Germany every so often, or when they have enough of an order to make it worthwhile. In these latter scenarios this would equate to a poor service.

At the end of the day your best course of action is to complain to the people you bought it from. A common mistake people make is to pressure the manufacturer in the belief that because they made the product they are responsible. In UK law the only people responsible to the customer are the people that sold it to you.

The principal of this legislation is that you have no contract whatsoever with the manufacturer, you bought the product from the retailer and they are legally responsible if it turns out to be faulty, or it cannot be repaired within a reasonable amount of time. Manufactures will often comply in an attempt to keep a customer happy – and so they should – but you are only indirectly their customer. Clearly they have a big vested interest in keeping all customers happy but at the end of the day when it comes to things like getting a refund and compensation it is the retailer that is fully responsible.

If the microwave is under 6 months old you may be able to get a refund. Alternatively you would have to argue that they have taken an unreasonable amount of time to repair it. Here’s a quote from my Washerhelp consumer section which may help. The law applies to all consumer goods not just washing machines -

You can reject a washing machine within the first 6 months

A new amendment to consumer law in 2002 shifts the burden of proof of fault from the consumer to the seller within the first 6 months. This means if a fault occurs within 6 months, it is automatically assumed that the goods were “inherently faulty” unless the seller can prove otherwise. This is saying that if a new part can’t last a mere 6 months, it must have been faulty (or of sub-standard quality) when it was fitted to the washing machine.

You can request a replacement, or you may be able to get a partial refund, which takes into account the fact that you’ve had some use from it. (A possible counter-argument to that could be any significant inconvenience caused by breakdowns in this time) An example of this could be if your washing machine works fine after purchase, but 5 months later the motor, or main PCB fails. You could argue that under the sales of goods act, this part must have been sub-standard or with fault when it was sold. Therefore you can reject the washing machine and negotiate a refund (taking into account you have had 5 good months of washing from it.) It is possible for the seller to argue that the cost of replacing the washing machine is disproportionate to the cost of repair and insist on a repair – especially with a minor fault. This highlights the apparent contradictions in consumer rights, which at times, only a court can decide on.

Washerhelp
#7. August 4th, 2010, at 11:46 AM.

Hello Michelle. I wouldn’t dream of deleting your comment, on the assumption that if you think that way it’s possible that others could think the same I’m glad to have the chance to defend your criticisms

Please read my article Potentially restrictive practices in Miele washing machines and the subsequent criticisms I make in the comments, and tell me if you still think I work for Miele.

I just try very hard to be balanced and fair to all sides of an issue. This means one time I may praise a company and another time I may criticise them, one time I may defend a company or at least put their potential point of view forward and another time I will agree with a user and criticise them. Most times, if you read my comments carefully you will see a roughly equal mix between agreeing with a commenter and pointing out the other point of view. At all times I try to remain very logical.

This article simply said that Miele had won Best Domestic Appliance Brand award at Which? and had won twice as many Best Buy awards than its nearest competitor. (I think they’ve done the same each year since). This attracted a few comments from people who were dissatisfied with Miele’s aftersales service.

The problem I have with some of the comments is that you can’t logically say that a company which has won award after award for aftersales service has rubbish aftersales service – because clearly they don’t, they’ve won loads of awards for it. One of the awards involved a survey sent to 425,000 customers who’d received an appliance repair in the previous 12 months and Miele was voted top for aftersales with a score of over 90%. So saying they don’t have excellent aftersales service flies in the face of all the evidence.

What you can say is that despite these awards, you personally have found them lacking or even have personally found them to be very poor. I have no problem with that although I expect people to be fair and unemotional about it and to paint the full picture so we the readers can make a balanced judgement.

Unfortunately an impartial balanced reply is not what people with a complaint want to see, especially someone who’s angry, which I understand, but I’m not interested in taking sides, just trying to view facts logically.

Your criticism about my comment is unfair, and presumably made after scanning rather than reading. You said, “you come up with excuses like “the part must be out of stock in Germany!”. Silly really…”

Yet if you read my comment you can see I said

“I can only assume the part required is just not in stock even in Germany. Either that or the order could be held up because they only order from Germany every so often, or when they have enough of an order to make it worthwhile. In these latter scenarios this would equate to a poor service.”

I didn’t say “must” be out of stock, and contrary to it being an excuse for Miele I finished by saying this would equate to poor service, which backs up the commenter’s complaint.

When you say, “your assertion that we are only their customer “indirectly” is ridiculous.” that’s also very unfair. It’s not an assertion of mine, I’m reporting how UK consumer law works. The manufacturer has no responsibility under the sale of goods act. All responsibility is with the retailer. You may not like it, but you are only indirectly their customer. You in no way bought the washing machine from the manufacturer, you bought it from the retailer.

As I pointed out if you re-read the comment, clearly the manufacturer has a vested interest in keeping customers happy as well they should, but in law you have no contract with them and if in dispute you can only get redress from the retailer unless the manufacturer decides they want to do something. If they don’t you are flogging a dead horse but you may be still able to get satisfaction by pursuing the retailer under the sale of goods act. ( EU 2 year guarantee. Sale of Goods Act gives us 6 years to claim for faulty appliances )