ps Amazon and Miele
As I recall, Amazon does not sell Miele vacuums directly. Instead, they partner with a bricks-and-mortar dealer that agrees to ship for free, which constitutes a sort of discount. The dealer obviously gets lots of volume, and is not breaking Miele company rules, since they are allowed to have their own websites and sell on the internet (at standard prices): Best Vacuum and Total Vacuum, both I believe in Chicago, sell a lot of machines on their own website.
The problem is, if something breaks, many local dealers will balk at performing warranty repairs on a machine they did not sell. Reviews by Amazon purchasers sometimes state that the local dealer gave the customer a hard time over place of purchase. Since I once received a Miele as a gift (granted, my parents were the purchasers and they accompanied me to a store to buy it; they insisted I have a Miele), I suppose one could say it was received in the mail as a gift from a relative or friend. The people at my local Miele store know my canister but do not know that I now also own a S7 upright. I'm enough of a regular customer that they would know they didn't sell me the S7. So far it has not needed servicing. If it did, I would probably have to concoct a story to the effect that my mother sent it (she bought one and liked it so much, she also bought one for each of her kids, from her local dealer).
The S500 canister was purchased at a sewing/vacuum center about 15 miles away from here, when the two local businesses in my town that now sell Miele did not yet exist, i.e. we went to the closest store at that time. Even so, when I bring it in for servicing, I am sometimes asked where it was purchased (for God's sake, it's 12 years old) and I explain it came from Moore's Sew and Vac in Mission Viejo, before the local store I now use for repairs even opened.
