@Laundress: you may be right about today's Tide HE powder approaching or equaling Persil. I wouldn't know because I tend to buy in bulk when I see it on sale...as a result, I have six or more boxes of Gain and Tide HE sitting on the garage shelves!!! It will take me several years to use them up, and they must be 2-3 years old already, so the most recent Tide HE I have tried is the 2008 version, or earlier!! Add that to the fact that I have two packets of Persil Megaperls, half of a large carton of Via (Swedish Unilever Persil), and four small boxes of UK Ariel (all either brought by friends visiting Germany or purchased by me in UK or Sweden), it may be another few years before I have any reason to buy a new box of Tide HE!!
@mrwash: you may be right, though a lot of friends my age in Germany will wash with Persil and nothing else. Why? Because that's how Mutti did it. And they still wash underwear and linens at 80-90C. Why? Because that is how Mutti did it. They will never change, but I see your point about younger generations not being married to Persil.
A little example about how we are slaves to high Miele prices here. I own a Miele S5 canister vacuum cleaner. I have a mixture of hard floors and carpet (about half of the house has hard floors, half of the house has carpet). European vacuum cleaners are wonderful on hard floors and have terrific cleaning accessories. Last night I used the Miele crevice tool to clean out the lint trap on the dryer (beneath the drum). The one place where they don't do so well is with carpets. I believe this is the reason why Miele recently introduced an entire new line of upright vacuums in the USA (S7 series) that still can operate all of the wonderful Miele attachments.
My Miele is ten years old. Still works fine, I have it serviced every 2-3 years and am told they will last 30 years if cared for properly. The vacuum came with the SEB-217 powerhead for carpet. It does a reasonably good job on my carpet, but no better than my old upright Hoover machine (but carpet is the ONLY thing that the Hoover did better). Miele has now introduced several updated, more powerful powerheads with height adjustments, headlights, etc., that perform much better than the SEB-217 in reviews. You can buy this device in Germany on Amazon for 107 Euros, which I presume includes tax and shipping.
http://www.amazon.de/Miele-3427131-SEB-236-Elektrob%C3%BCrste/dp/B000A32LI6/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335365179&sr=8-1-fkmr0
Or you can buy it in USA for $259:
http://www.amazon.com/Miele-SEB-Electro-Premium-Powerbrush/dp/B0058OILBS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1335365305&sr=8-4
The Amazon price is the full standard US price, though it does include shipping and no sales tax because it is being shipped across state borders (if you live inside the state in which partner "BanksVac" is located, you will pay that state's sales tax on top of $259). If I buy it in a Miele store here in California, I would likewise pay the standard $259 plus 7.75% sales tax. So this upgrade will wait until my next trip to Germany, and I'll simply order it from Amazon.de and have it shipped to the home of friends prior to my arrival. I know of people who buy Miele vacuum bags and other accessories while visiting in Germany because to us it's virtually "free": when you can buy the product in Germany for only 40-50% of what one pays in USA, why not? They don't weigh a lot and won't push one's luggage over the weight limit. Before a trip to Germany, I order what I want from Amazon.de and have it shipped to a friend's house near Köln (and they no longer think the behavior is odd, once they learned that all of the purchases would cost double or more in USA).
Anyway, this is an example of how Miele controls prices over here. The prices for Persil, which is sold through the Miele store network here, is even worse. No one in Germany would pay the prices we pay here for it. Actually, I don't pay those prices either. Either I buy it in Germany, or else I make do with American detergents. As Laundress pointed out, the quality is increasing, and if Proctor and Gamble can make a decent detergent (Ariel) in Germany, they can do so here. The majority of existing machines in USA are still top loading, but of machines currently being sold, front loaders have the majority. So with time a majority of machines in US homes will be front loading. At that point there will be more competition and quality as the demand rises.
[this post was last edited: 4/25/2012-11:02]
