miele.com
A Cup of Coffee Not Worth of Trouble - Miele Buyer’s Remorse
I recent bought and installed a latest Miele coffee machine, CVA-7840, just about two months old. It makes nice coffees. But, the good stops here. It is poor in quality, especially considering its price tag (at almost $6,000) and extremely high-maintenance. But the worst part is Miele’s customer support. Let me explain.
The machine is extremely high-maintenance - and this is the least painful part of the experience.
The machine keeps rinsing itself, every time you turn it on or shut it off. And, you cannot adjust how often it does it. The machine would turn itself off automatically after about 5 mins if you don’t make another cup and it will rinse. If you turn it back on right after, it will rinse again. I estimate that it uses at least 2/3 of the water in the tank rinsing and less than 1/3 making coffee. You have to keep adding fresh water and dumping the waste water all the time.
That’s not enough. The machine has internal timers that will force you to perform major cleaning or descaling of different parts of the machine, every month or two for each. The entire machine will stop functioning if you don’t, no matter which part needs cleaning. You need 4 or 5 different types of chemicals or cleaning agents and Miele is the only place you can buy them from. They are not cheap either, unlike your dishwasher soaps.
And, don’t press the cancel button. If you do, perhaps changing your mind right after a selection, the machine will continue to dispense and grind the coffee and dump promptly. It will not use it for your next cup of coffee.
Now, the worse - poor quality.
The machine was installed at the beginning of this year. From the start, the milk dispensing did not work. After days of contacting Miele, a local contractor showed up and he tried everything to no avail, until he disassembled the back-panel and found the problem. Two thin copper plates to connect the sensor circuit were not engaged and did not make the contact. The circuit never closes and milk container signal not sent. This is a simple step that was apparently missed in the final assembly of the machine and still passed the testing, if there’s one.
As I just said, the machine performs mandatory cleaning on different parts on timers. After a little over a month of use, it decided to clean the milk pipework (with a special agent). However, it never completes the cleaning and goes right back to the beginning of the cycle and ask you to start again when it reaches to the last 2 mins of the 11-min cycle. The worst part is that this cleaning operation overwhelms the whole machine and stops everything else. The machine is in this deadlock loop and you cannot get rid of the menu or do anything else, not even getting to the main menu or setup. The machine is practically dead.
The worst - Miele customer service.
I called Miele customer services and talked to multiple agents. They talk to you from their given, standardized manuscripts. After much struggle they would schedule service calls from their Miele-certified local contractor and it would take two weeks before the contractor could come in. The first contracted service technician showed up and declared he does not service Miele coffee machines. In fact, he never saw a Miele coffee machine and never had training. (You wonder why he took the service call in the first place?)
I called Miele again and they “escalated” the call with a promise that the next service technician would be a Miele technician, a Miele employee not a contractor. Days later, they called back to inform me that there’s no Miele’s own technicians in the Washington Metropolitan area and that they had to schedule another contractor. It would take another two weeks. I am still waiting.
All in while the $6,000 Miele coffee machine is in coma and I cannot use it at all. I pulled out my near-10 years old Keurig coffee maker (cost me something like $50-100), which I’ve used at least 3 times a day and never cleaned, to sustain my daily coffee craving!
For those of you who are thinking about these expensive Miele machines, be aware. Hope my experience provides you at least one data point of warning and caution.
