I've had my SZ since '99 when the price tag didn't bother me. Now, its up there. I have a few friends who are realtors who tell me I've added to the value of my house as SubZero has such a great reputation. Even with the mechanical complexity of the ice on the door, I really haven't had any failures once I figured out that you have to switch from a Culligan Reverse Osmosis water purifier to a Kinetico Quickflow for the Ice maker to keep from overflowing. With the low water pressure of the Culligan, I had to manually defrost the icemaker when I tested to see if the freezer really can go below zero. Back in those times, the SZ was the only fridge with ice on the door that consumed less than 900Kw/H a year thanks to the air lock on the door dispenser and having two separate compressors for fridge and freezer. My house is solar, so that was very important to me. If water on the door dispenser stops flowing, you set the fridge temp below 34 and it froze. You can't leave salad stuff outside the crisper even at 34. It will freeze and decay quickly. Same thing with fruits like strawberries. They go bad faster if they start to freeze. My beer has never been as cold and delicious since it started resting in the meat drawer. Your mileage may vary. My other appliances are a beloved F&P dishdrawer and an AGA cooker. But, thats another thread.

"I was grown up to believe that german technology was second to none." Geeze, I wished you could have taught the 2 mercedes Benzes that I owned that!!!!! After about 10 years of keeping the Service Dept of the Mercedes Benz dealership well financed, I finally got tired of that, and bought a 1993 Cadillac Allante. It has seen the Cadillac Dealer service dept once, and that was to buy and install a battery for it. I have a friend that still buys Mercedes, and after 70,000 miles gets rid of them as He says that's when the repair expenses start to really escalate! I did buy a Miele DW, back in 2006, as it was the ONLY DW, back in 2006 that had the 3rd tray, (cutlery rack). It is rarely used, and has been trouble free, whilst my Electrolux Oven, speed oven, Induction cooktop and wine fridge are used all the time, and are alto trouble free. My Jenn-air fridge has only needed 1 repair about $350, since 2006, You cant even talk to an SZ repair man for that (yeah I'm exaggerating just a little) and I doubt you would be able to get much repaired on a Liebherr fridge for that price either. Moral here, is there are more makes of fridges other than SZ or Liebher. Take a look at some of the Whirlpool products, (Kitchen-Aid, Jenn-air, Whirlpool), Look at some of the GE's. When I had my rentals, I just bought "garden variety fridges", and I never had any problems with them, certainly not the kinds of problems that you see with this new "esoteric Expensive Stuff"! Gary

Melinrk, I don't think people meant to slam you, and I'm very sorry that you're feeling bombarded. I'm pretty sure that they're just eager to present their own experiences and love. It's very good to hear your input from the other side. Something to be aware of is that during the time period you mention SubZero had an acknowledged problem with some parts, I think in the compressor system, that led to really bad problems that annoyed a lot of people. SubZero has been up front about these problems, and made good on them, and fixed their supply stream, but it seems to have left a very sour taste with the owners in question. I too have had SubZero love but didn't like the new models as much, and couldn't make the sizes work for me, so ended up with Miele. There are alternatives. But there is a difference in function between KA and the high end fridges. There's more to it than just get cold. I still have my Kenmore from grad school (awaiting the finishing of my kitchen). It has moved 3 times and the food doesn't spoil. It's out of balance, however, the light hasn't worked for 15 years and I did try to get it fixed (unfixable), and things on the top shelf freeze, and the crisper drawers are useless. But, having not replaced it until now, it's free. And it gets cold. It even makes ice (in trays). No one would keep a SubZero for 15 years with no light. They'd stamp and scream until someone figured out how to fix it. That's what Palimpsest was referring to. If it doesn't matter to you whether the drawers are cooled at a different temperature, if the fridge senses the temperature change that opening puts out and supercools so that your groceries aren't constantly getting warmer and cooler, etc., etc., you don't need a $7000 fridge. And if your fridge does all these amazing things, it might need to be fixed a couple of times in 20 years. There's something out there for everybody.

This is a difficult decision, isn't it? We aren't big cooks but did consider resale value -- we looked at our local market and price range and determined we had to go with higher-end appliances to stay competitive in event we had to sell sooner than we expect. We ruled out Thermador as my SIL put in all Thermador appliances and had to replace every last one within the last 10 years. We went with Wolf for the oven/micro/cooktop. Miele for DW as we were replacing an older Bosch that had problems, and we love our Miele vacuum. The hardest decision was the fridge. We knew we wanted to do panel-ready so brand name, when it came to resell, wasn't all that important. We wound up splurging on a SZ because my parents have had one for 30 years and it's an excellent fridge. What's more, since we aren't huge cooks, a fridge that can keep food fresh a longer time is a very big benefit to us ---and boy does it do that! Takeout and leftovers stay fresh for weeks. And finally: I stood there in the appliance store and closed and opened less expensive french door fridges over and over... a zillion times.... and just couldn't get over the chintzy plastic part between the doors of most brands. Maybe it's a silly thing as that part is probably easily replaced. But I wondered about the rest of the fridge, the parts I couldn't see.