I would either stick with the Miele, and know if you need service, you will have a wait...or go with the Wolf. Too many issues out there with Thermador and Dacor.

If you can purchase the appliances using a credit card that will add a year to your warranty, go for it. The Wolf warranty is better than the Miele, but the extra year given with the credit card will help.

I agree with Baver, that I think Miele is a very good bet, and let them worry about getting service to you if you need it. Wolf would also be my 2nd choice, and a good one if you feel better about the service issue and the warranty...But you still might need to choose another brand of dishwasher? I heard they were developing one, but is it out? And with enough info to make you feel confident about a new product?

I find it curious that you live 4 hours away from a Miele presence yet the boys at Wolf, and Liebherr have managed to find your sleepy hamlet and not only setup a retailer and train up a service guy to boot?

If that's really the case then I'd either roll the dice with an all Miele setup or more likely go with an all Wolf cooking setup and get a 27" SubZero 700 tci. The rest are too iffy and don't offer any performance advantages and have too many service complaints with no real savings on price either.

antss - Phoned Miele and the two closest agents were 4 hours away in either direction. Miele is only sold direct here in Canada so maybe that has something to do with it and there is no incentive for the local appliance shop to get involved with them. They said they can get anything other than Miele due to how it is sold here. Not sure, but they do a hell of a lot of Wolf and Thermador for a small town in the mountains. I'm starting to think I may switch to the Wolf set-up with the E-series oven, frameless induction and Bosch DW. I can get the Liebherr so will likely stick with it over a SZ.

baver - Yup, will use a CC no matter what I get to add a year onto the warrenty.

Thanks for the input.

Look at it this way. If you need service, you will need to schedule it. You aren't going to need to wait for them to drive 4 hours. They show up at the appointed time and you're good to go. It really doesn't matter that they are not down the street. Parts will have to be shipped no matter what. We are in a medium sized city and the nearest miele repair is probably 3 hours away., but they do have someone assigned to our area several days a week. It may be worth it to ask the authorized repair shop if they provide service regularly in your vicinity. That makes it easier to schedule.

You can buy a one's Months On-line subscription to Consumer Reports for $5. You can also do a search for Wolf and SubZero reliabilty as well as doing a search on this web-site. I highly recommend that you do that, since the location you are at , appears to have some "service Logistics Opportunities"
Good Luck!!!

Gary

Canada explains it, I can't talk intelligently about Miele's ops in your country.

In light of the Wolf/Sz presence I'd go that route then. Would not go the Liebherr route unless it was significantly (30+%) less than the SZ, which in the USA it is not.

lucypwd makes a good point about scheduling. If Miele is willing to come to you if any issues come up and Miele is what you really want, then go for the Miele.

I'm in a sleepy hamlet in the U.S., yet we have a Wolf dealer right here and Miele is a loooong way away, as are technicians. It does happen.

kitchen - how much kit does your Wolf dealer have to show, any idea of how much they sell? More importantly is there a certified AND experienced technician around. I 'd rather wait a week for an experienced Miele guy to come round than have a certified but non experienced Wolf/SZ tech pop round tomorrow.

Not too sure how much they sell but everytime I am in the store, there are always new Wolf ranges ready to be shipped out at the door and Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances boxed up. They don't display any of it so it is always special order. I've been able to see most of the stuff I want while in the store though. I purchased my last Wolf AG range from them and they install for free. Miele called me and installation sounds like it will be very expensive if I do it through a certified installer. The local shop is putting a quote together right now then I can compare to the Miele prices.

I also checked into the SZ 700TC and there is really no price difference and they have never sold one so again, no experiance for service and install. In the end, I'm sure I'll be more than happy with either brand.

antss--I don't know the answers to your questions. I don't know how much they sell, but we have a couple of very high end gcs around and some Houston-based kds that always spec SZs, so I am assuming they sell quite a bit. Our hamlet has many ranches owned by city people who weekend here or retire here. The tech who installed our range was both certified and expert, but he has since retired. I do not know who does it now as I've not needed service. I do know that several people did not get Miele because of the difficulty in getting techs out here. This was almost four years ago; the situation may have changed. I did see several SZs and some Wolf ranges at the local dealer recently, though, so I know they are still about.