Totally agree with you. I used to use Palmolive as it seemed "sudsier" than Dawn. But lately it is horrible and like you I have to keep add more soap and more water to get the dishes even relatively clean. For the commenter that said to "use your dishwasher" as it uses less water--many plastic, fragile and even some cookware items CANNOT be washed in the dishwasher. So you still need a hand dishwashing alternative for those items. I believe the changes are due to environmental regulations that we don't even have any idea were passed that the companies have to abide by. Or they are doing it themselves to improve their ESG scores. If that is the case I think the fact we are all using MORE soap and MORE water to get dishes clean defeats the purpose of changing formulations. I'm going to be asking several of the manufacturers exactly this. If I hear back I will share what they have to say here.

I decided to do a patent search on DW detergent to see if I could find any information about the use of detergent tablets. The search turned up all kinds of information about DW detergents and patents granted to P&G, Palmolive and Reckitt Benckiser. Almost all companies state that the use of tablets provides easier dosing, and less storage and transportation costs. I wonder which is really important to them, the ease of dosage or reducing storage and transportation costs. Multi layer tablets solve some problems due to the fact that it keeps some components separate from each other avoiding reaction, instability and exhaustion of the components before they are even used, and some components are damaged by the compression used to make tablets so putting them together in layers helps prevent this. Given this I wonder if they can mix this stuff together into a powder? I know they could, but would it be as effective? Dishwasher Pacs are described as a tablet also, just that one compartment of them may contain a gel which may contain hydrogenated castor oil as a thickening agent. Oil this is the reason my hands were oily when I bought a bag of Cascade 2n1 action pacs reached in and found that some of them were busted, pulled my hand out and it was full of oil. P&G and Reckit Bencisker approach etching a little differently in that P&G uses insoluble zinc salts and RB uses a variety of soluble materials and could use zirconium, titanium and other things. RB also claims to add water soluble glass components to their mixtureI guess to help replace components that get worn away from washing. One patent for DW Gel stated that the Gel was developed because water was known to leak into the detergent cup during the dishwasher pre wash and once there would mix with the detergent and cause a very high alkalinity and a breakdown of the detergent before it was released into the main wash. The Gel worked because it had a higher surface tension and the water leakage was not consequential.Hmm never heard about this--I thought it just supposed to be convenient. If I remember correctly I had a Dw that you could not use a gel in because it would be oozing out of the cup during the prewash.so I guess water could run in also. I found something interesting in a P&G patent that was dealing with the use of enzymes. The information stated that chorine bleach required manufactures to use special processing and storage precautions to protect compounds and it caused some damage to metal rims on china and silverware, but that there was no known surfactant that could perform its function which was to prevent the formation and deposition of troublesome proteins and protein grease complexes on hard surfaces during the washing process. These statements make me wonder if this is the reason I get identical cleaning results from ElectraSol powder containing chlorine bleach and almost any other detergent containing enzymes. Both of these clean just fine for me. In the patents all companies give a series of scenarios and ingredients they MAY use in the products and they dont necessary state that they are using any method but they do state a preferred scenarioso no one can ever really tell what they are doing, but you can get an idea of the compounds involved. I found the search interesting and it seems that this is just one big research field in which all companies know a lot about the background and chemistry involved and are merely tweaking things by building on the past which makes sense. I did not do a complete exhaustive search so there may be other patents that are newer than the ones I found which are dated from about 1990 to 2003. The above comments about the information are mine. If you want to get the details you should do the patent search. Good stuff if you are interested in wading through it.

Thanks so much, everyone, for your responses. I bought the Never M-Ts on a 4-for-3 offer, and I gave one to my builder, who also uses his detergent undiluted and hasn't had a problem. So that's what I'll do, too. My dispensers are cheapy no-names from Lowe's, but they go nicely with my very simple P-F faucets. Loves2cookfor6--Thank you for your good wishes. We have lived in the kitchen now for two whole days, and we just love it. I'm too nervous to use the new convection ovens yet before reading the user manual from cover to cover, so we continue to eat from the microwave and toaster oven. But I did make hamburgers on the new Wolf range top, so that's a start!

As mentioned earlier, all cycles, except normal have at least two rinses. One rinse is not adequate, in my opinion. Miele gives guidelines regarding detergent quantity in the owners guide. Since your dishwasher has a built-in water softener, I would follow those recommendations. Regarding domestic dishwasher detergent, chlorinated bleach went the way of the dodo bird a long time ago and was replaced with enzymes. Enzymes are more effective, work well in cooler temperatures, and are not corrosive. The only bleach you will find in today's detergent is oxygen based. Miele cautions against using commercial dishwasher detergent in your owners manual. Commercial products still contain sodium hypochlorite and can damage your machine.