Is this a very recent U-turn from miele? I'm sure I saw something only in the last couple of years that top tier quality was still their primary business model. As an aside with a point of anecdata, our bosch washing machine which was sold with a 2-year warranty (thoguh actually upgraded to 4 by a special anniversary offer) and bought having just discovered that the entire washing machine industry was turning out minimum warranty-able products including formerly ultra reliable (or at least percieved to be...) Bosch, and it's just about 8 years old, with heavy use and the only maintenance it's needed has been to remove a fiver stuck in its drainage sump... but i guess we've just been lucky and should be preparing for the worst.