A budget washing machine leaves the house twice. It comes in through the front door. It goes out on the back of a scrap lorry seven or eight years later, worth nothing.
The machine
The Miele WEA 128 WCS is the cheapest washing machine Miele makes. It costs €984. Miele tests this series to the equivalent of twenty years of use, running the core components through thousands of wash cycles before the design ever ships. The motor has no brushes to wear away. The parts that take the load are metal where budget machines use plastic. Miele keeps spares for models long out of production, so a tired pump or a perished seal becomes a repair instead of a reason to buy the whole machine again.
The math
A €300 machine from a budget brand averages eight to ten years. Across two decades you buy it two or three times. Call it €750 over the span, with nothing to show for it at the end. The Miele is a single purchase of €984. A decade in it still sells on Marktplaats for €120 to €150, because the twenty-year name travels with the badge. Net of that resale the Miele works out around €834 over twenty years. That is €42 a year against €45 a year for the machine you keep rebuying. Only the Miele is worth money on the day you are finished with it.
| Miele WEA 128 WCS | Budget machine (€300) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price new | €984, once | €300, rebought 2–3× |
| Tested lifespan | ~20 years | ~8 years |
| Spend over 20 years | €984 | €600–900 |
| Resale after a decade | €120–150 | ~€0 |
| Net over 20 years | ~€834 | €600–900, nothing left |
Owning one
An appliance almost never holds its value. This one does. A well-kept Miele moves on to a first flat or a holiday home rather than a scrapyard, and the buyer pays for the years still left in the drum. Every wash you run on the machine you already own is a wash you are not paying a delivery van and a disposal fee to replace. The wealth here is the replacement you never make.
Verdict. Buy the machine that is still worth money a decade after you paid for it.