This thread is a bit old. However, the complaints about Miele are still valid. I have been a loyal Miele customer for 13 years. I recently spent well over $30,000 on new appliances in my current primary residence. I regret it. While in the process of that recent kitchen renovation, a Miele induction cooktop in a second home has failed. The appliance is out of warranty. Miele customer service for out of warranty appliances is essentially nonexistent. They use bots on their website for the chat function. Their replies to emails appear to be written by bots. No one at their customer service phone number can help other than submit a technician visit, which you can do on the website. If you do not live in a major metropolitan area (NYC, LA, Chicago, etc.) there are not adequate competent service technicians available to help you. Local appliance retailers will not help at all if you did not purchase the item from them, so good luck if your retailer no longer sells Miele. Several retailers have stopped selling ?miele due to the poor customer service Miele provides. If you do happen find a competent technician. That person will be booked up for weeks. If you are a capable do-it-yourselver, you may be able to diagnose some problems after getting a hold of the technical manuals. But then, you will spend hundreds to thousands of dollars and still have an inoperable appliance. I am currently out more than $1400 for parts and still don’t have a functioning cooktop—not since July 2022. If you decide to just go ahead and replace the broken cooktop with the current model, you may find that the cutout dimensions have changed. Do yourself a favor and don’t buy Miele. They are great when they work and their performance is amazing. That said, in retrospect, the cost and problems with maintenance and repair are not worth it. Customer service is appalling.

Miele is very specific about their installation needs and those must be followed to the letter. Be SURE to go to the model number of the appliances you are getting, download those specification sheets, make copies and hand them to the contractor, cabinet people, plumber and electrician. They need them and I never depend on them getting the right ones. My kitchen is 12 now and I started with a different brand. Had to replace over time -- first the oven, then the fridge. Went with Miele. The Miele dw is 12 and has never had a repair. It looks like new and functions wonderfully. I'm completely devoted to my Miele oven though it's the older pre-steam model. I will say, it requires a learning curve to use it. When I bought it I made up my mind I would and it's paid off.

I'm responding to venmar's question: While all of the above comments are true, I do have to wonder why some of the GE and Kenmore branded version induction cooktops from the early 1980's are still functioning while our modern equivalents are so fragile and short lived. Well, actually, there will be some current induction ranges that will last just as long as some of the first gen models you mentioned. Note that I said "some." Seems to me that in any given electronics product line, some units will chug on for a long time and some will not. One of my aunts still has a functioning early Kenmore induction range. (FWIW, it was my intro to induction cooking appliances three decades and something ago.) So, the last time I needed a new stove, I looked into maybe getting a "pre-owned" Kenmore induction range from the 80's. A bit of research showed that every story of longevity like my aunt's was swamped by many tales of woe, of gnashing of teeth, of unrepairability, etc. etc. My take away is this: it is really hard to say if all of our "modern equivalents" really are significantly more fragile and shorter-lived than the older induction models. Or older stoves generally. As plllog says of fridges, nobody really expected a Kenmore to last for decades, even the older models that didn't have any electronics, but some of them did. That some antique appliances are still around and working doesn't necessarily make them better than the current models. That being said, I certainly see the appeal of Venmar's vintage back-up coil burner range for simple reliability and durability. It is not just induction, either; it is pretty much all major brand appliances which run off circuit boards. But there will be tradeoffs. The extent of those trade-offs may or may not be worthwhile to any given one of us. As appealing as the simplicity and reliablity factors can make a vintage range seem, there are still some major trade-offs in day to day cooking such as waste heat, slow responsiveness, uneven ovens, etc. Seems to me that this is pretty much applicable to all appliances. Fr'instance, even with all my neo-luddite tendencies, there is no way I would trade my current Kitchenaid/Whilrpool FD fridge for the 1954 Westinghouse chill chest I had in graduate school 40 years ago. The problem as I see it is the uncertainty. There is no way to know if your unit is going to last a long time or fail early. That is why I find myself nodding in agreement every time Kas says "I now consider these cooktops to be effectively leased . . ." Regarding Kas' s comments about GE maybe building those old induction ranges better, my recollection is that those early GE and Kenmore induction ranges were actually rebadged units built by Sanyo in Japan.

Sophie, I think you solved it! I shortened the story in the original post, but actually my nanny was the one cooking this morning. My best guess now is that she must have turned on the wrong hob when she wanted to heat up the egg pan. The tea kettle got so hot the enamel melted and the cooktop turned it off (we saw FE 44 flashing - the signal for overheat/turnoff). Then, as it cooled, the glass cracked. I came in at most 5-8 minutes later and the tea kettle felt mildly warm, but definitely not hot. It's possible that the cast iron had time to cool by that point, though. The confusing part is that she was able to cook eggs on the hob right next to the tea kettle and I can't believe that she didn't notice that the controls for both hobs were activated. She seemed genuinely perplexed, though, and I don't think she was covering up anything. Also, I had no idea that an empty pan on an induction stove can overheat so easily. I think that should be better known if it's such a problem. Lesson learned, even if we don't know the exact sequence of events.