dishwasher woes..Hotpoint BF72

Or Bosch or Siemens... Those three get the best write ups from Which? for reliability. Miele tend to be quite expensive however.

I've had 2 Bosch. The first was small so I gave it away and it is still running - bought in 1997.

Bosch & Siemens being the same company of course.

And in my experience not nearly as good as they're cracked up to be. Designs may be fine, but their production engineering leaves a lot to be desired. What CAN be said for the Bosch group and can't be said for most other makes is that spare parts are readily available from Bosch, on the web, albeit at a price.

Miele are generally well-designed and well constructed, but they're a horrendous gamble in that spare parts are priced at hundreds of pounds and vital information is often not available. In some instances, it's a case of buying some parts on ebay from German servicemen who rebuild circuit boards. Possibly the best answer is to buy a bottom-of-the- range Miele where at least the chances are that you have the pleasure of using a nice machine and a good chance that it will last a long time while if it doesn't, then at least it's not thousands of pounds you're throwing away.

Secondhand can be a good buy, if you get them at a reasonable price. What you can do is treat them like cars: buy a secondhand model, then keep your eyes peeled for another of the same type (maybe damaged in some way, or wait a few years until the prices have come down) which you can rob for spares. Depends on having the space to store it, of course. When I was watching ebay for them, the same lower-end models would turn up frequently, so it isn't so hard.

Older Mieles are better than newer ones. But spares are still available for early-1980s models.

Theo

I can only go on my personal experience. I have a Bosch washing machine and Bosch tumble drier and a Siemens dishwasher. All are well over ten years old and not one of them has required any attention at all.