"All to often the M word is mentioned when quality or standards are in the same sentence yet there are so many other brands offering so so so much more"
That's only because basically Miele is the best, more established, most available quality brand you can get today. Easily the best washer we've ever had, best performance, efficiency, and most reliable machines you can buy on the market. Much better than the Bosch it replaced, my nana's AEG 86741 (a decent machine in itself), and miles better than all the many GEC made Hotpoints that have been in our family, both in our own home and throughout the homes of many relatives.
Would be interesting if you could name "so many other brands" offering "so so so much more". Besides Maytag/Asko, and the V Zug, I don't think there is anything else left out there made to the same high quality. (And, if I'm not mistaken, the currently sold Maytag/Askos don't have a delicates cycle?).
Not just that, but it's not a requirement to slam the washer door - it can be closed just like any other machine. But on the same merits, I'm not sure there are many other machines out there that would be able to take the door being slammed so many times.
We've had a minor glitch with the washer - in which they sent out an engineer free of charge to sort, turned out to be nothing at all - but they still updated the machine for free, and swapped the main control board to send the previous one to the factory to see why it gave a random error code for no reason - don't think any other company out there would even bother doing that if there was no major fault. An installation error with the dryer - again only found out after having an engineer - free of charge - out to it. Problems resolved, pretty much the best customer service we've had from any company, a pleasure to deal with - can't say the same for Bosch when we wanted them to fix one of their washers that basically died after 3 years. The fact that they also endorse 5 and 10 year warranties says it all for their commitment to quality.
Everybody who has used our Miele products in our home have commented how solid, how quiet, and how well performing they are - so much so that a couple of family friends have bought Miele machines because of it - from washers/dryers to their vacs.
Perhaps if more brands out there had the same quality in terms of build, durability, and performance, then they wouldn't be as "boring". It's just a sad state of affairs that so few offer that.
Rant over.