Model SHU3032UC. Yeah, it's at least 9 years old now that I think of it.

I also just learned that the savings on the clearance Miele are negated by the $220 superfancy Miele installation fee. Thanks for the advice, everyone, but never mind. I'll continue to use a screwdriver to turn on my Bosch. :-)

You don't need a Miele Master Tech to install an Inspira I.

The last time I saw Inspira on CR they gave it the highest rating for washing but next to last for sound and ease of use.

They compared to everyone else's quietiest model.

Miele racks are also a bit different.

Their web page has a video about dishwasher testing. The washing performance that the Mieles were downgraded for is measured by smearing a paste of food on dishes and seeing how well the dishwasher removes it. Neither price nor reliability is a factor in this. I noticed that they are recommending one of the Mieles, the Inspira.

Catman,

So CR is saying the least expensive Miele cleans well but the Mieles with more features don't clean as well?

BTW: No one claims the CR admits they factor price into their ratings or that they admit they have a bias against high priced/luxury appliances.Simply, that CR does have a bias against high priced/luxury appliances.

And yet if you look at the JD Power report for 2010 Dishwashers, both Bosch and Miele are at the top with 24 points each.

Overall win goes to Miele ?????

Here is a link that might be useful: JD Power Dishwasher 2010

"Catman,
So CR is saying the least expensive Miele cleans well but the Mieles with more features don't clean as well?"

Yes, that test is objective. When they decide whether to recommend one they consider other factors. They say
"We highlight high-scoring models that combine performance, features and value, so that you can choose the product that best suits your budget and lifestyle."

The G2143SC[SS] ($1,450) and the Optima G2472SCSF ($1,900) have poor washing performance but the Inspira G2142SC[WH] ($1,199) is excellent.

The G2143SC[SS] ($1,450) and the Optima G2472SCSF ($1,900) have poor washing performance but the Inspira G2142SC[WH] ($1,199) is excellent.

Then CR is full of $^!T .

I got my Inspira by buying a discontinued model on clearance, about half price. It's the 2142 model. It's got a more versatile racking system than the new one, IMO. It works a treat--does a great job on whatever I throw into it. If the house is dead quiet, it can be heard, but is not in any way intrusive. If the family is home and there's the usual amount of ambient noise, you can't hear it at all. My family routinely open the door while it's running and are surprised, because they couldn't hear it. If you can get a really good price on it, I wouldn't hesitate. Also, you may not NEED a Miele certified installer to install it, but doing so extends your warranty to two years.

Cj

PS--I just reread your original post-- $220 for installation is NUTS. It only cost me an extra $100 to install mine--and since the machine was half price, that was fine with me.

Cj

I'm not sure if this promotion is available in your area now but here in Canada there will be a promotion for free installation of Miele dishwashers starting on March 17, 2011. I recommend that you find out from your appliance salesman whether there's a promotion like that coming around. My salesman told me that it's around $350 for the Miele dishwasher installation! That's absolutely nuts!

"Then CR is full of $^!T ."

Yes, they are some of the times.

"$220 for installation is NUTS. "

Not in all instances. Remember you are getting the warranty extended. + That fee will sometimes include installing a cabinetry front to the unit and alignment, and sometimes delivery is rolled into that #. Sometimes the water supply has to be modified to allow attachment too.

Cj - $100 is a bargain for sure, but the same could be said by that business' accountant. "Nuts" Somewhere in between is the average customary amount.

I highly doubt CR is full of anything. They test, they report. There is NO financial or other benefit to misreportiing results. CU does not make money through the sale or non-sale of any machine so there is no incentive to lie.

We have had SEVERAL cases of Miele dishwashers leaving food on the dishes reported here at GW. So I would think, following the most likely scenario, is that CR either got rum machines OR they did not install them adequately. But since what CR does is what we in the testing business call "operational test" they do not use their testing for diagnostics or development. They dry the food on and run the machine according to the manufacturer's instructions. If they don't work, then they don't work. If there was food left on the contents of the washer then they get a big goose egg. This may not be "fair" in that the manufacturer is not presented with an opportunity to fix a defective machine, but remember the same holds true for the rest of the machines in the ratings. All were treated the same way: installed and run according to directions. If the machines don't get the dishes clean then they don't get them clean and CU reports it. Tough $^!T, Miele.

Here's the earlier post about this:
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0112360926653.html?21

Here is a link that might be useful: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/appl/msg0112360926653.html?21

CR is completly full of $^!T

They have their own agenda and bias.

They keep telling us to buy their magazine so we can find out what cheap products work better than premium priced products.

During the Toyota unintended accelaeration fiasco they acted like Toyota's PR firm. Stressing in a news conference that Toyota made very high quality cars but they were temporarily removing Toyotas from their recommendation list. Why stress temporary and and how good Toyota cars are fundamentally? A few weeks later they held another press conference announcing they were putting Toyota back on their recommendation list. Why go out of their way to help Toyota?

When CR rates dishwashers what is determined to be clean,easy to use, or quiet can be very subjective not objective.

CRs recommendation list is 50/50. I have used products that have been very good and CR says they are horrible. I have used products CR says are the very best and they are horrible. A random guy off the street is just as reliable.

Tough $h!T CR apologist. CR blows.

Needlessly overboard. Undeserved rant. They are not "horrible" and they certainly are better than "a random guy off the street."

They do what they do very well. I wish they would do mo/betta, as I've said many times. They should disclose things they don't disclose in their testing. I, too, sometimes sense agendas at work and sacrifice of the objective for the subjective. But they still provide loads of valuable information.

All I can tell you is that my Miele Optima is the favorite appliance I have ever owned. I like it even better than my induction cooktop and that's saying something because I love that thing. It's super quiet and gets everything clean---even a pot with cooked on, hardened and dried up oatmeal came out sparkling after DH had left it just sitting around all morning. This forum convinced me that I should get the Miele and I trust the folks here more than any rating by a professional rating organization. This forum is real life, not a standardized test. Just my two cents.

Original poster here.

I always wondered why some people felt so passionately derisive of, say, Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or whoever. But now that I see the extent to which people get worked up about bland old Consumer Reports, of all things, I guess it all figures. (but I do respect all the responses, either for/against CR... I learned long ago that nobody on this forum is stupid).

I'm going to call some local Miele repair/installers directly, see if they can offer installation for less than $220. I'd rather have a bottle of Roederer Cristal than spotless glassware.

FWIW I went with an Asko washer/dryer combo based on CR, which rated it best performer.

It's an ok machine but 3 of the cycles didn't work and after they replaced it the same 3 cycles (delicate, wool and handwash) still don't work. Never have. They refused to do anything further. Nothing is wrong with our electricity.

My tech guy came and switched out the controller boards which evidently worked at Asko when they tested them. But they don't work in my house.

I have a Bosch pair in the apartment with 0 issues and I think I prefer the washing and drying after using it for a year. That one wasn't rated as high. I bought that on recommendation of my appliance dealer.

My Optima works incredibly well -- CR said theirs doesn't clean.

The scandal is the cost vs the performance. It's like buying a new Mercedes which doesn't start and then it doesn't run well and you're being told it's ok but you're not a good driver. Let me be polite and say that's a load of bunk.

For the first reno I bought a lot of Viking -- despite reports here on the forum about repairs and all the issues -- and lived to regret it. This last time around, I researched everything to a ridiculous point and spoke with people here who actually had lived with it the appliances. Big difference. 0 issues.

The wide range of posters and experience reported here provides a good spread of opinions. People certainly have difference experiences as products change -- Miele ovens are a case in point -- but on balance I've had very accurate readings from folks here even when I was very skeptical. I trust the forum.

moja - you make some good points but CR is sometimes just plain wrong and or their testing methods sometimes flawed. They have even been sued successfully over some. This doesn't mean a hidden agenda, but it can mean incorrect results. If they choose to ignore manuf. operating instructions because it doesn't fit with their test parameters then their results will be skewed and they should disclose that or simply leave the unit out of the tests, telling readers that this thing will require you to jump through more, or special hoops if you buy it.

It would be like setting up their auto test to only run on reg. gas and giving low marks to those models that use premium but run less than stellar or taking a pseudo SUV into the desert or jungle and complaining that it's not very good because a range rover or landcruiser work better.

The other thing that hurts some brands is CR's bias against expensive products. They also make NO consideration for a product's longevity or lack thereof. Sub Zero get dinged every year because CR's SZ sample size is small and they look mainly at failed ice makers. Some have units that run fine after 20 years long after that top rated Whirlpool or whatever is in the landfill replaced by CR's latest best buy. They make no consideration for this in their ratings.

What is also misleading to many reader and is a bit CR's fault is the fine print is often not properly interpreted. Many reports will say something like " score differences of 6 points are meaningless" or something to that effect. On some lists the score between the the 2nd place unit and the 17th will be 5-6 points effectively making the units equal. Most people will not view the 2nd place DW (or whatever) and the 17th place one in the same light no matter what the fine print says.

Look , I think CR is a good resource and I am a subscriber. However, they are not perfect , nor should they be the absolute authority or even a benchmark when selecting a consumer product. Their recs. are sometimes just rubber stamps of the appealing "least common denominator" . They are a good starting point.

Regardless of whatever they may be full of, it seems like the more I know about something, the less useful CR's results are, and the more I'm apt to quibble with their methods/results/whatever. The less I know, the more useful CR's results are vs. what I would pick on my own.

What I'm most curious about in this thread is how can it be that some Miele DWs do so poorly on this food removing test. On the surface, it seems like a fair test on CR's part, even moderately objective. What aspects of this test could be fooling some Miele models -- or their sensors, since Inspira did better than Optima? Is their scrap of food paste too small? [I don't know enough about Miele DWs (or CR's test) to venture a guess, but I'm curious.]

LOL! Rough night there, Diego??

Antss, I know of no instance where CR has ever been "successfully sued." I know they have made errors in tests (child car seat testing was incorrectly designed is one example) but they did not lose any court case that I know of. They correct errors when they are discovered. There is no way an organization that tests so many items can avoid occasional errors.

Yes, they are tougher on more expensive items when it comes to recommendations because they operate on the assumption that if you pay more for something it should perform better. Should a $2000 machine rate as highly as a $500 machine in the rack and stack when they perform identically?

I do have some beefs with CR and feel that their customers deserve better from them when it comes to their published results. They do not "show their work." They do not provide the raw test scores, the methods, or the weighting used. That shortchanges everybody. And they could do a hell of a lot better with the video, showing more of the tests, than they do. But I do not buy that they are biased against any particular manufacturer.

Oh, BTW: CU was the ONLY group that went out and tested a Toyota with simulated full throttle runaway and determined the best, safest course of action should it occur, and published it. The TV stations and the newspapers were saying press and hold the on/off switch for 3 seconds. That cuts your brake boost and power steering. CU said bump the tranny to neutral and slow to a stop, clear of the roadway, before shutting off the engine. So they did something right. As far as the rest of the stuff Diego was wanking on about, it sounds like bulls^!T to me.

Thank you Mr Mojo -- I am chuckling away, deeply.

Not sure why Mr Diego is so worked up, but there is something particularly gauling about the poor track record of CR given that they claim to be non-vested, objective observers. When one expects the ratings to be great, it is especially upsetting to acknowledge that they aren't.

I agree completely that what's most problematic about CR (apart from their empirically poor track record at picking winners) is the opacity of their reporting. They tell nowhere near enough about any of it: not the objective tests or the subjective weighting of overall scores and best buy calculations.

So the presumption that they are objective or unbiased is questionable. Why will they not put their tests up for reproduction if they are disinterested, unbiased testers? It appears suspicious when they won't just give us the data and let us read from it what we will.

The fact of the matter is, there is no test and no tester anywhere, ever, that is unbiased. Bias happens. The only way to control for bias is to report it and allow others to interpret one's data from within their own set of biases. And the only way to grow a body of accepted knowledge is to state what you've done in your tests and let others try to reproduce them. That would be a way to, for example, catch a problem with a Miele that just happened to be a bad apple. It's true that all manufacturers may have an equal chance of pulling a lemon for the test, but that doesn't result in the consumer receiving useful information. *Reproducing* those tests would, however. This would be a test of the tests, as opposed to of the machines themselves.

So why is CR proprietary about their testing? And why oh why are they proprietary about their subjective summations? That is, why can't *I* chose what weight to place, say, on price in the overall score? Or noise-level or energy efficiency? They make some judgment about which of these factors is most important and this completely skews the overall ratings and best-buy decisions. It's legitimate for someone to state they have a well-reasoned formula for this subjective call, but it is not reasonable to refuse to spell out the ingredients of the formula. Not doing so smells of, well, something to hide.

Funny, I've never actually literally thought CR was behaving immorally or in an overtly biased fashion before. I don't actually think they are shilling for any company at all, ever, and I don't think they act in a way they don't think is entirely objective. But as I write this, I'm beginning to wonder. There is an appearance of impropriety when secrets are insisted on being retained. And the bottom line is, I have bought one too many "best buys" that weren't, for me to trust CR as I used to.

Mind, I too am a subscriber, and value their mighty ability to purchase and test blindly. But insisting on keeping so much under wraps is just not OK. And in the end it has completely damaged their credibility with me as well as my faith in their recommendations.

Makes you value "evidence-based science", eh? I've always hated that phrase because what else can there be? But in fact if you're not presented with the evidence, you just can't know. The anecdotes presented on this forum may be hard to process statistically, but in some ways it amounts to more data than CR ever lets us have.

CR's reader wants to know which appliance/whatever is the "best," which to buy with assurance. Same question we get from many newbies here.

It's packaged so someone doesn't need to get into the messy qualifiers or take the time to do their own analysis. It gives actual test results with easy-to-digest qualifiers, overall the best cost/value ratio. A bit like sports scores without the commentary

CR has no requirement to be transparent. They are a for-profit business and acutely aware of both the power and impact of the ratings they sell.

No one else has gone at it focusing on the high end things that occupy many people here because the magazine market for that isn't big enough. Their business is magazines. More like Vogue than Science in the Public Interest.

Interesting that "The Toyota Example" was used.
The problem started out in the Lexux (yep the "High End Brand"), in fact my BIL (Now deceased), told me the problem showed up in the Lexus, at least 6 months before the **** hit the fan (IE the Press).

Toyota uses many of the same parts for both cars as do appliance manufactures (Recall the example of the Whirlpool Compressors in not only Whirlpool products, but SZ, Miele etc etc).

So CR just doesn't "Get It" when it comes to High end Stuff. To them, A "high end product" that uses much the same parts as the more midpriced stuff, has a warranty that is no longer than the midpriced product ---well those tend to get dinged by them.

They fail to take into account that most of these "High End" products are "Luxury Products" (see my post about UMRP) where at least 2 appliance dealers decribed them as such).

All of us want/need a little "Luxury" in our life, and if we have the means to do it, or scraped up the cash, somehow, Why NOT!!!! It would certainly be a boring world if all our kitchens were the same and filled with Toyotas, instead of the occasional Lexux, Benz----whatever.

Gary

@Roccocogurl: "CR has no requirement to be transparent. They are a for-profit business and acutely aware of both the power and impact of the ratings they sell."

Actually, they are wholly owned and run by a non-profit foundation. Since there is a product received from subscription fees, they are not deductible, but donations without quid pro quos are so.

Also, as subscribers, customers, and members of consumer's union, we should have a say in things if there are areas we feel deserving of improvement. To me, the most glaring deficiency in Consumer Reports tests are the failure to adequately and fully report their numerical methods and document their testing. Their failure to do this forces us to rely upon the notion that what they consider important is what we consider important. I, for instance, rate noise far more highly than I do energy efficiency. If I had the component numbers from the tests, I could run them myself with my OWN weighting applied. My results, including the importance of price, might result in a completely different results heirarchy.

Yes. Well said. What should we do (as stakeholders) ... start a petition*?

I for one am still stuck on CR as the legacy of Ralph Nadar, a hero in my books. While it is interesting and possibly even true in some functional if not literal way, what roccocogurl says about CR, that they are at the end of the day a business (which their nonprofit status doesn't really change, not in a functional sense -- look at hospitals, e.g., or heck, universities!), that *still* doesn't mean they can't release their f-ing numbers. Especially with their website where that stuff could be available at a "deeper" level without compromising their 'just-give-me-the-answer' crowd, why can't they just post that stuff? Honestly... As I said, not doing so completely feeds the *appearance* of bias and hidden agenda, as amply played out in this thread. People here have suggested overt corporate tilting and apologizing and numbers-stacking. All that could be dispelled if they would just publish their data. And if it is all not-for-profit, I just cannot see why they won't. The only explanation I can imagine bends right back around to roccocogurls', that this is all just a shill for selling magazines.

sigh.

Where is the truth here? Why can't they just give us access to their test results? That's how science is conducted. Why can't they be more "scientific"?

*Hey -- how about we write to Ralph Nadar? He's still involved with CR...

Hey, CR is meant for the masses and quite frankly it probably mostly meets their needs. For those of us on this forum, we've outgrown it and look to other sources, like this forum, for our info. If CR started comparing the finer points of Bluestar vs. CC they'd probably lose most of their readership.

As far as Nadar, I respected him back in the sixties, but no longer. Thanks to him we were saddled with W for 8 years.

I stand corrected. It is foundation based. But it's a huge business (see below).

They worship the guys who do the testing there. They have final say over all content. There are no "independent ideas" or reporting there except for what the testers conclude.

Whether it's an online subscription or a paper magazine they are selling magazines.

From the website:

CU publishes Consumer Reports, one of the top-ten-circulation magazines in the country, and ConsumerReports.org, which has the most subscribers of any Web site of its kind, in addition to two newsletters, Consumer Reports on Health and Consumer Reports Money Adviser. They have combined subscriptions of more than 8 million. All of CU�s work is informed by the more than 1 million readers who respond to our Annual Ballot & Questionnaire, among the largest and most comprehensive consumer studies in the world.

Also:

The organization generates more than $200 million in revenue, and a staff totaling more than 600 work at CU's 50 state-of-the-art labs and offices in Yonkers, N.Y.; its 327-acre Auto Test Center in East Haddam, Conn.; and our three advocacy offices, in Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, and San Francisco. Consumers Union is governed by a board of 18 directors who are elected by CU members and meet three times a year.

For me, weissman hit the nail on the head. Their focus is not the high end -- at least in the home appliance area (doesn't seem to stop them with computers or cars).

Wonderful points all. Aliris, not sure what the best course of action to get CR to move into the information age with their testing methods and reporting, but I am all for nudging them off the dime. Maybe we can get deeageaux to launch a few more cruise missiles at them. Perhaps if we all sent him a couple quarts of Jim Beam?

To wrap it all up, I went with that clearance Miele Inspira after all, despite CR's Big Black Circle. Thanks again to all for their advice.

PS Nadar? Is that anything like Gaydar? Oh, you mean Nader. Never mind.

We have had 3 houses since 1995 and 4 Miele dishwashers. Entry level Miele DWs and 2 top of the line La Perla units. THE BEST, quietest, most amazing 100% trouble free appliances we have ever owned. My Mom, in fact is still using the one I gave her from 1995, and it has still NEVER needed a repair, part replaced or anything. Miele makes the absolute BEST dishwashers!!!

Congrats segesta and welcome to the cult. LOL.

Tee hee rococogurl!!!! :-)

"The less I know, the more useful CR's results are vs. what I would pick on my own."

A lot of people operate under the premise that ignorance is bliss - how do you think most of the Wash. D.C. population manages to get/stay there?

moja- just because you don't know something doesn't make it any less factual. Bose successfully kicked them in the groin in the 80's - case went to the Supremes if i recall correctly. That could be the only one with a judgement , but I'm sure some were settled off the docket. That said, most companies fail because as CR's typically doesn't seem to have an overt agenda against products with products performing poorly in their results.

weissman - you really think Nadar was responsible for W moving to D.C.? Let me tell you, it was a cadre of FWRGs that you have never heard of that pulled those strings.

segesta - hope your Miele is a lot better than CR says it is !

not for profit and public are two different kinds of businesses.. The latter must show their accounting , while the former has no requirement to do so.

aliris19 wrote, perceptively: "So why is CR proprietary about their testing? And why oh why are they proprietary about their subjective summations? That is, why can't *I* chose what weight to place, say, on price in the overall score? Or noise-level or energy efficiency? They make some judgment about which of these factors is most important and this completely skews the overall ratings and best-buy decisions."

There was a time, long ago and far away, when I was the world's biggest fan of Consumers Union. The founder, Colston Warne (he was much older than I was; I got to know him when I was still young), was a personal friend, and I truly believed that Consumer Reports performed an important mission and did it well.

As time went on, I had some issues with the testing results of specific categories about which I had schooled myself in depth. In the late 1960s, Herbert Keppler, then an editor of the (now defunct) magazine Modern Photography, summed up in a scathing indictment in his magazine column what was wrong with CU's testing of SLR cameras in a pre-Christmas 1966 issue of Consumer Reports. The top place of the Ratings in that test went to a Miranda camera that was made with many manufacturing compromises in order to meet a price point (using gobs of grease to reduce the number of ball-bearings in shutter mechanisms, for instance). In the evaluation of "convenience," the availability of interchangeable pentaprisms, a very rarely used feature even by the very few photographers who care about it at all, was absurdly given a huge weighting. Lens quality was judged on resolution alone, without regard to contrast, flare, chromatic distortion, etc. Miranda sales soared that Christmas season, but a lot of those cameras were broken within months; they were not built to withstand anything more than occasional casual use. As Casey Stengel said, "Yer could look it up."

We continued to subscribe to Consumer Reports, but Consumers Union finally lost me about ten years later in a test of clothes dryers that happened to be published in an issue that arrived in our mailbox just days after we -- following very in-depth research on our own, because CU has not tested dryers in a long time -- had purchased a clothes dryer. In our shopping, we had decided that we wanted a dryer with a bottom-hinged door, also called a "hamper door," because the concrete floor of the basement, where our washer and dryer reside, is hard to keep clean, and we often drop an item or two onto the floor while transferring wet washed laundry into the dryer; the hamper door would catch the item before it hit the floor. However, in its Ratings, Consumer Reports ranked EVERY dryer with a side-opening door above EVERY hamper door dryer; apparently, the location of the hinge was, in CU's opinion, the number one most important Ratings factor.

Two or three months later, in the Letters to the Editors section of Consumer Reports, there was a letter that could have been written by me (but wasn't) from a woman who wrote that the hamper door had been the most important POSITIVE factor in her own dryer purchase decision, and she was very happy with her hamper door dryer. Immediately below the letter was a comment from CU stating that the letter writer was WRONG and the CU was RIGHT, because ordinary homeowners are far too stupid to know how to avoid barking their knees on drop-down dryer doors, and barked knees are a far more serious problem than a few dirty clothes that fall on the floor. The comment concluded with CU's vow to continue to downgrade any dryer that has a door hinged at the bottom.

I have rarely read Consumer Reports since that incident. And in all these years, we never have barked a knee, even once, on the hamper door of our clothes dryer.

>>>cadre of FWRGs that you have never heard of that pulled those strings

antss - I have no idea what this means - what's an FWRG??

and yes, I do blame Nader - if he had pulled out, most of his votes most likely would have gone to Gore and he would have won. Nader's attitude was that there was no difference between Bush and Gore so it didn't matter to him - yeah, right!

Well, antss, that would all be rosy except for the problem that CU did not lose to Bose. They won, in the Supreme Court. Completely vindicated with not one shiny nickel paid to Bose. So that would not be the same thing as "successfully sued" would it?

Herring Maven: loved that story! Perhaps someone should have asked CR whether they were downgrading bottom-hinged oven doors in their ratings of ranges at the time. I seriously doubt a shin gets any less barked in oven door collisions.

Weissman, damned if I know what FWRG is either, but my guess is that they have something to do with UMRP, too. ;-)

That's quite interesting about CR. I realize the German counterpart works somewhat differently. Usually, it's a fight between Miele and Bosch/Siemens models. In the last issue, both Miele and Bosch/Siemens were the overall winners.

This is from the last dishwasher test in April of 2010. That would be the table that lists all the different tested aspects of the dishwasher.

Name of product
Price margin in Euros
Average price in Euros

Overall Score 100%

Cleaning and Drying 40%
Cleaning
ECO cycle
Auto cycle
Quick cycle
Drying
ECO cycle
Quick cycle
Duration in minutes
ECO cycle
Auto cycle - normal soil
Auto cycle - heavy soil
Quick cycle
Range of available cycles

Efficiency 30%
Energy Consumption in kWh
ECO cycle
Auto cycle - normal soil
Auto cycle - heavy soil
Quick cycle
in standby mode
Water Consumption
ECO cycle
Auto cycle - normal soil
Auto cycle - heavy soil
Quick cycle
Rinse Aid consumption
Noise in dB(A)

Safety 10%
Mechanical safety
Protection against leakage

Ease of use 20%

Features (not evaluated)
Width / Height / Depth / in cm
Hight-adjustability in cm
Capacity in place settings / number of cycles
Name of tested ECO cycle
Name of tested Auto cycle
Name of tested Quick cycle

Some things to mention: the ECO cycle is some sort of standard cycle every dishwasher has. It provides the most energy and water efficient wash that will still get normally soiled dishes clean. Newest Bosch dishwashers go down to 1.7 gallons on their ECO cycle. The usual downside is that the ECO cycles always takes the longest - 2.5 hours on average.

Because of this, a quick cycle of some kind was tested in this issue for the first time. Think of Miele's Turbo feature: same cleaning performance in less time but with higher consumption. Bosch/Siemens has a similar feature named varioSpeed. It cleans and sanitized a full load in 65 minutes. Kinda like dishwashers in the past used to do...

Along with the usual text discussing the dishwashers, new features, how individual machines performed and so on, there's always a separate box called "Selected, tested, evaluated". In this box, the testing methods are explained. I'll give you a rough translation.

Tested: 16 dishwasher; 12 built-in models and 4 free-standing ones.
Date of purchase: October to November 2009
Downgrading: If the "Efficiency" score is only fair, the overall score will be reduced by half a grade. If "Noise" is poor, the overall "Efficiency" grade can only be half a grade better. (Note: I know it's hard to understand but if you have the actual table in front of you it makes sense ;) ).
Cleaning and Drying 40%
Tested with cold water connection, one detergent tab (Somat 1) and regular rinse aid and water softening salt. Cleaning and Drying was tested in accordance to EN 50242 and EN 60436:2008 on the ECO (comparison) cycle with regular soil; Auto cycle with regular and heavy soil; Quick cycle with regular soil. (Criteria for the chosen Quick cycle: run time of around one hour, 50°C temperature, allowed for normal soil by the user's manual). We measured the time each cycle took. We also evaluated the range of available cycle, how well the Auto cycle adapts to different soil levels and how well the machine cleans itself (interior and filters).
Efficiency 30%
The Energy- and Water Consumption was measured during all tested cycles. The maximum capacity in place settings was taken into consideration. We also tested the energy consumption during standby mode, during a delay start and while the machine was switched off. The Rinse Aid Consumption was determined by the manufacturer's recommended dispenser setting. Noise: was tested in accordance with DIN EN 60704-2:2006.
Safety 10%:WE evaluated the mechanical safety (protection against injury, workmanship, stability with free-standing units) and the protection against leakage (for example by manipulating the water level switch).
Ease of use 20% Five amateurs evaluated: selecting a cycle, adding detergent, rinse aid and salt, (un-) loading the baskets and cleaning the filters. One expert evaluated the user's manual.

In some older tests, they also state how the dishes were soiled. This hasn't changed because, yes, there's a German norm that says how to exactly soil dishes for dishwasher performance tests. The user's manual (or a separate leaflet) has instructions on how to load dishes into the dishwasher for performance tests.

So basically, I think the test done by our "CR" are quite transparent and reproducible - at least more so that the ones performed by American Consumer Reports - it seems.

Alex

Wow, Alex -- you mean to tell me there is a different, separate CU or CR reporting in Europe and America? Hmmm.... I guess that's pretty dumb of me not to have known or expected that, it's not as if the appliances over there aren't entirely different, I guess I just never had any inkling that CU was active in Europe.

I googled FWRG and still come up blank: antssssss?

I am slowly becoming convinced CU is fatally compromised. Interestingly, I find their reports have less information in them in this day-and-age-of-information than formerly; while wired versions of their magazine have the potential to support infinite amounts of data, they've seemingly made a decision to support instead those whom Weissman refers to as wanting less rather than more info. Which is a ridiculous situation, as this needn't be an either/or choice given all the flexibility the ether now provides.

Here's another thing that bugs me about CR -- they feed some pretense that they're supplying information, when really it's all (or mostly) just prejudice (cf the barked knees). Maybe the latter-day refusal to publish information is a belated acknowledgment of their true stance. But I've always felt a tacit flattery that subscribing to CR puts me in an elite class interested in 'data'. Truth is, it's more honest and possibly effective to just go to Costco and let them make the decision for me as to what brand I'll buy. No bones there, I get what they stock. And usually it's a pretty good version of the item in question, whatever it be. I've had better luck in purchases with the Costco-filter than the CR-filter. But Costco dispenses with the consumer-flattery of 'you are such an informed consumer, this is a citizenly virtue to be an informed consumer, etc'... So in some sense I feel better at the end of the day dispensing with the false flattery, acknowledging I'm letting some business make these decisions for me completely blindly (to me), and be done with it. And to boot I usually wind up fairly happy with those Costco-vetted purchases. I still, in contrast, smart from the "best buy" purchase of a sewing machine I made some, gosh, 33 years ago. I hated that thing all these years; I still feel resentment about that purchase! Ah, the paths not taken....

I think with a subscription and support base that large, not to mention a track record so questionable, I might feel just fine foregoing the CR subscription in the future.

I guess, then, it's a Nadir we must have been talking about....

Gosh! It took me ages to log in... *Grrr*

Oh no, aliris19 - I wasn't very clear, I guess. I didn't mean to say that "Consumer Reports" is also present in Europe. I was just referring to CR as one of many consumer magazines out there. And since this is an American forum, I was using CR as an example most of you will know. Actually, I was talking about a magazine called "Stiftung Warentest" - "Foundation Product Test", roughly translated. But they do just the same as CR: testing products and reporting about it.

Alex

Interestingly, it seems that "Stiftung Warentest" was set up by the West German government for the purpose of consumer education, safety, and to allow the honest evaluation of advertising claims.

Consumer's union emerged from the wreckage of an earlier endeavor, 'Consumers' Research'. It appears the foot soldiers in this guy's testing labs unionized, went on strike, and then set out on their own as an organization while he made the best of his ignominy.

Interestingly, both Stiftung Warentest and Consumer Reports survive on subscriptions. They are allied in an international body of consumer testing organizations called ICRT.

I personally set out on an individual campaign to educate and foster advancement at Consumer's Union. Since every subscriber can be a voter, I intend to communicate my displeasure with the black box testing approach, the shadowy numerics, and the unexplained anomalies that crop up in their testing. I started my campaign when they gave me a survey to fill out on the website. I am also going to email them my concerns about the lack of documentation presented with their tests.

Hey antss, did you find us an example where CU has been "successfully sued" yet? We are on the edge of our seats here ...

I've subscribed to it for most of my 68 years. I trust that their laboratory is run with integrity so I believe them when they say that the 2 pricey Mieles are poor dishwashers.

My disappointment with them is that whenever the welfare of the consumer competes with the liberal agenda the consumer loses and sometimes they don't even say what they're doing. Here are a few examples.

In the 90s when the Gov made automakers stop using freon and switch to R134a auto air conditioning suffered but CU was silent. When Energy Star came in the 90's fridge capacity went down and the price went up. In the 70's when emission control degraded car drivability they were silent. They always advocate tighter Gov control of consumer products and services even when the benefit to consumers is uncertain.

But I still respect their testing. Even if I don't buy something they like I feel smarter for having read their opinion. I'm about to buy a stacked washer dryer they don't like, the Speed Queen.

Wow, Mojavean, that's really interesting about the founder of CR and its schism with CU. Or maybe schism isn't the right word, they were perhaps more sequential. Anyway, the reaction to the communist and union threat is really interesting.

I, too, chewed on CU a bit in their recent "survey". I have done so in the past, though, and heard nary a thing. I know many, many who have criticized them in this way over the years. I think I even read an interview with the director responding to this sort of criticism a few years back. ("We can't release our findings because that would jeopardize our objectivity"... blah blah blah - nonsense. I suspect they won't release their findings to minimize that which specific companies can complain about, but of I course I don't really know).

It really is a crying shame for CU not to morph into more open accountability. I should think the take-home lesson of wikileaks and this whole modern internet era is that more transparency is vital. If it hasn't happened already, sites like GW will leach CU's support as people take stock of their bomb-purchases and find other ways to supplant the "research" provided by CU.

Trouble is, the aggregate summation of information provided by CU is unique, and the right, really the only way to provide useful information. I am really valuing GW, but at the end of the day, these are all just individual anecdotes, provided by strangers with varying degrees of reliability and their own often-unacknowledged sets of filters and biases. It's always been something of a transcendental and frankly, political question the degree to which one values anecdotes. But I should think this internet era ought to be pushing at least one forum (e.g., CU) to more thorough and open accountability, not less (which would be the inherent realm of a anecdote-site such as this).

But it's always frustrating trying to tell another how to run their business! From salesmen who could actually *make* the sale if only they ever smiled, just once, to mega-testing firms that instill presumed filters onto their analysis without disclosing their makeup.

I suppose there might be more hope of tilting at this windmill than at some others, in deference to their inherent or at least stated 'democracy' (I think they give a nod to such theory, do they not?). But I think, truthfully Mojavean, it is a lost cause. CU knows full well their value would be enhanced by open reporting, and they have consciously chosen, long ago, not to do so. They have variously defended the decision over the years, but I am unaware of them ever wavering. I think nothing short of a flat-out full stakeholder's revolt will force any such change of policy. I hope I'm wrong and if you'd like to direct this particular footsoldier, lemme know how. I'll sign whatever you suggest or write an individual letter if you think it worthwhile. Feel free to contact me offlist if you'd like to strategize. :)

CU knows full well their value would be enhanced by open reporting, and they have consciously chosen, long ago, not to do so.

To the contrary, I think CU knows full well their methodology would be criticized into insignificance and that is why they refuse to fully divulge their methods and assumptions. Anyone familiar with statistics will tell you a half-dozen ways why CU's "reliability" ratings should not be taken very seriously.

Given the availability of all kinds of product information on the Internet, the need for a chronicle like CR diminishes. Pretty much all they have left to point to is their product ratings and their lobbying efforts on behalf of consumers. Given that they are not clear about their biases, their opinions really are only little more organized than those found on, say, epinions or GW. And, as catman points out, they haven't done that well lobbying, either.

So why purposely off the one thing that keeps people subscribing?

Well, I will disagree a bit with that, Steve. I DO think the value of CR testing would be enhanced by taking it out of the black box and fully disclosing the methods and processes used in test. The more open structure of Stiftung Warentest does not seem to have hampered their longevity as the CR analog of Germany.

And though I agree that the "opportunity surveys" used for the reliability reporting are less than ideal from the statistical inference standpoint, (the best, most reliable method of survey is a true random sample) you must also keep in mind that they do not introduce any specific brand bias into the reporting either. (CU members fill out surveys not based upon what they bought, but simply based upon whether or not they bought a given consumer item.) Personally, I AM interested to know what kind of luck CU members have had with their gear, but I do take the results with a grain of salt, very much like I take the anecdotal information from GW with a grain of salt, too.

If, by fully disclosing their methods and processes, CR eliminated the issues which negatively affect their findings, I would be fine with opening up the box. It would be good for them -- and for us. While there are some organizations doing the kind of testing that CU does, very few even attempt CU's scope.

But I see two large issues. One is the disconnect between CR's product recommendations and reliability ratings. (Assuming for the moment that the deficiencies in CU's testing methodology apply equally to all products,) can a product truly be superior if it fails more often or sooner than competing products?

The other is that I believe there is a brand bias in CU's reliability reporting. It's a kind of servo loop: member joins CU to find out what to buy, buys a recommended product (otherwise, what's the point of joining?), and therefore -- like many other CU members -- has one of CU's higher-rated products on which they rate reliability. How many folks join CU long enough to fill out a reliability rating form and keep picking products which are "Not Recommended"?

While CR does try to reduce the influence that creates, they cannot truly control a self-selected group -- especially groups as minuscule as their returned-survey pools. Further, it is not clear that CU attempts to sample in relation to the popularity or market share of a given product (whether they should is arguable). Finally -- beyond the bias already inferred in this thread against expensive versions of products -- CU's research is biased against better products because cheaper ones likely will fail and be replaced before too many surveys rack up. After many years of use, is a CU member qualified to state whether the repair their old washer/car/TV needed was because of a design flaw, poor materials, a tough operating environment, or misuse?

mojavejean, I think we certainly can agree that CU's advice can be accepted just as opinions offered on GW or epinions or audioreview or cnet or anyplace else. It just bothers me when people (outside this thread) treat bad science as the honest truth because somebody does more of it than anyone else does.

Many years of use??? As I recall when I was a subscriber some years ago, the yearly survey asked only about appliances that were five years old or less. Six years and older were disqualified from answering. I fibbed on the age of my appliances and answered about them for a couple years longer, then quit bothering with it.

I'm not aware of anyone else with the resources or interest in buying many many different makes of an appliance, multiple times over (I believe they buy, for example, more than one Samsung no. abcd when they test refrigerators -- may be wrong about that but I certainly hope so). The power of a single entity willing to simultaneously test a field of competitors is tremendous. And again, I think unique.

So since they're most of the way there toward greatness, why can't they go that last 10 inches and tell us what they are *testing*??? Poor reliability of their picks belies the whole setup.

I had always assumed the reason they don't incorporate reliability survey results into their recommendations is because they presumed the inherent bias in the collection of this data rendered it of limited value, the degree to which must be determined by individuals themselves. In fact I think I read them say as much once way back when.