To add to your comments, sjhockeyfan325, I had never heard of Pacific Sales until I walked into Best Buy and saw their display. It is sort of odd - I don't recall seeing any advertising, however I don't watch tv much. I'm more apt to watch Netflix. The new display was truly amazing (not what I expect from Best Buy) - they had this huge wall interactive display - if I remember correctly it was for just one of the brands. I would love to see stores like that have an app, where you could scan a barcode on an appliance, and it would appear in a mock up of your kitchen. For kitchen design, you should be able to add a floor plan, input an image of doors/colors/countertop, then place virtual appliances. The Pacific Sales/Best Buy in Dedham also had some more mid-range brands, but those high end ones are so beautiful! By the way, I'm glad to see that others are choosing to mix up their appliances - I really think that is the way to go - different brands really do different types of appliances better. Oh, in case anyone is looking to call up the Pacific Sales/Best Buy (I wish they would shorten that name!) the salesman I was speaking with said to not call the main number - it can take a long time. They have a direct line - I just dug the info out of my purse; (781) 320-1894 (the 0 might be a 6 - sorry, I was in a rush). If anyone visits one of those stores, and wants to call the store later, make sure to get their direct line.

My husband and I had an appointment at a Direct Buy in New York City. After the sales pitch, we were given the opportunity to view the catalogs of affiliated manufacturers. We were mainly interested in furniture (case goods and upholstery) and home furnishing items (fabric, accessories, etc.). The highest quality level of these items were on the low end of what I would term "mid-quality" home furniture. Several furniture manufacturers were low-end mass-market type. I was disappointed to find that only a couple of the furniture manufacturers I was interested in were participants of Direct Buy. That said, the pricing structure of the two manufacturers I was interested in, which had a couple of case good pieces I wanted to price out, was virtually the same as what a smart shopper will negotiate at their local furniture store. The high membership fees become ridiculous in this scenario. We also saw that a number of products actually had surcharges applied to them. These surcharges make purchasing from Direct Buy more expensive. We also noticed that home electronics and applicance items were not competitve to what one could price out at the local PC Richards or other electronics stores. Direct Buy is not the place to go for appliances/electronics items--there is heavy competition for these items and many places one can go to find the best price. While we were sitting with the Direct Buy sales associate, my husband called his contact at the electronics/appliance store we have purchased from for years, priced the exact model of an item available from Direct Buy and found that the Direct Buy price was in fact more than $100 more expensive. All this said, the high membership fees that Direct Buy charges may be of value to individuals who first and foremost have many, many purchases to make, i.e., a whole house to purchase for and are the kind of people who: (1) Don't have the time or inclination to research the best price among retailers. This is quite understandable, it takes time and effort to get the best value for your money!! (2) Are willing to settle for lesser quality items (for the money) in purchasing items for their home--this is really a point about making sure you purchase enough items to justify that hefty membership fee! (3) Doesn't like to negotiate with sales people. This is really a good point to make in favor of a Direct Buy kind of place--many people in the United States don't like to do this & Direct Buy has already done it for you. You're not getting the best price or best quality for your $$ but at least you're not paying full retail!

"Pleased enough" was not meant to be derogatory. I really like them. It's is just hard to determine the expectations of others on a forum like this. I live in a modest, turn of the century farmhouse. We have not scrimped but we are also not the "spare no expense" types either. My expectations for cabinets sound a lot like yours. They needed to look nice, last well, work well. I was not in need of a lot of custom doodles and options. Things I liked: they seem sturdy enough, they had plywood upgrade to 3/4 inch thickness I think, they were well packed, they had enough variety for us. Things I didn't like: there are a couple of my doors that have little marks along the edges (not very visible at all unless you have the door open) from shipping (I totally did not have the option to unpack every box and whine about how they looked to the nth degree). Some of the drawers don't close quite as aggressively as they need to so with the soft close I end up "finishing closing" them sometimes. As for the pull outs and stuff, they are built by me and put on pull out hardware available from Lee Valley. That's a whole other issue and if you go that way you might want some feedback about them. All in all I am very pleased with my MidContinent cabinets. They were a good value. They are DECIDEDLY better than what we had. I am not particularly hard on things so they will last a long time. They had a look that I wanted and they were fast. Ne

OMG dadoes - who the heck would know that stuff. Thank you it's interesting. Silverlined: thank you YES! I was just having that conversation - husband was saying "just get a new one" and really, what I loathe almost more than the purchase price, which is bad enough, is the researching of a new machine. But I was ready to concede that the machine just might have met its lifetime perhaps. I hate the idea of just replacing parts and I didn't know how to diagnose whether the pump was too slow*, etc. So I had dipped into the buy-it thought process and I was wondering the same thing now: how many machines are literally trashed for want of a plug-release?? That's it. The entire thing works perfectly now. Though I can't be sure it was entirely a plug release, it could also have been fiddling with the bladders that connect the middle rack and also dealing with the mechanism that was causing a misconnect there (I hadn't been aware of it as a problem, but something got fixed and changed, I think, because I am fairly certain the rack now goes to a higher height than previously and I have to also push a little hard to really feel that engaged seating of the middle rack). I'm thinking - don't know - that if that whole upper mechanism isn't functioning properly, perhaps there's a negative vacuum type thing missing, and the whole system doesn't work properly. Is it all that delicately balanced? Could be I suppose.... Anyway, yeah - think of all the unnecessary resource-waste of machines being replaced needlessly. It's kind of mind-boggling. The whole exercise scared me tremendously and yet it was all incredibly easy. I'm sure some such repairs might be more tricky but - dunno - I think the lesson should be stronger that: this is just a plug. Find it. It's not where you think it is. I didn't get that message from online chatter, what came through was more of "you could look for this if you feel like it". Not, "your machine probably doesn't need to be thrown away. You need to find gunk that's inhibiting its function, then it will work". And maybe you-all's experience shows this to be simplistic but from here, that's what it feels like to me! lol. *Speaking of which ... the resistance across my pump was zero ohms. What does that mean? Online videos said above 100 is good. Another said "approx 200." Mine just flew to 0. So ... there's nothing inside inhibiting current flow ... what does it mean?? I wonder .... *does* it mean the pump is anemic? Would a new pump have more resistance?