We just built a new home, and I looked into many appliances and brands. We installed a Whirlpool french door refrigerator that I like very much. Granted, it has only been working for two months, but so far so good. It was reasonably priced, it's quiet, and it keeps the food at the right temperature. Although it's much larger than our old fridge, it uses less electricity.

My first inclination was to go with GE monogram for the ovens (ZET-1 and Advantium) which is a combination that people here on the board seem very happy with. Our appliance saleswoman actually talked me into buying the Whirlpool GSC-309 instead. It was $2200 (as opposed to over $4000 for the monogram) and I like it very much. It has capabilities very similar to the Monogram combination though not quite so powerful.

I was going to get the GE induction cooktop, but bought the Miele instead. It cost a little more, but has double the warranty, the elements are individually timed using the cooktop timer, and Miele is universally liked here on the Gardenweb forums.

We went with a kitchaid dishwasher which, so far, has worked flawlessly and is very quiet. It cost about $700.

Be careful kmgard, if you spend enough time reading this forum, you will be hypnotised into thinking that you need to spend $20000 on kitchen appliances to be happy!

Always love to read about happy owners. I too, am looking for a DW and free standing frige to go with a ZET1 and micro. Seems that many repair men praise Whirlpool friges. Do you think that Kitchen Aids have the same guts and therefore should be as good? Or are they a diffrent platform?

Deluthjeff, can you share your DW model with us?

I would steer far away from Kitchenaid ovens. Do a search in the kitchen forum. They are fine as long as you never clean them with their cleaning feature. I was getting a kitchenaid and cancelled the order due to unbelievable bad reviews

Our DW is a Kitchenaid KUDK03 (white).
You might want to look at the fixitnow.com site and Consumer Reports site. Those who post on this board have not been impressed with the CR reviews, but their repair/reliability ratings are compiled from surveys of their readers and thus a more meaningful sample than 'review' sites that print reviews of those highly motivated to review which don't include the 'silent majority'. I don't think you'll find any information that claims modern appliances are more reliable than they used to be.

I can't speak to the quality of the individual appliances you're considering, but I will mention that, if you care about how you spend your money and what your money says about you, there are better choices than GE.

GE just recently "decided" to keep its appliance division after years of shopping it around (no takers). I've been around long enough to know that no one makes big investments in something they plan/hope to sell. Maybe GE broke that rule, but based on what else I've learned about them, I have my doubts.

GE has a documented history of being a bit -- um, disrespectful -- to customers and employees. In the mid-80s GE sold a series of refrigerators on which the compressors failed prematurely; GE did not step up to the plate to address the issue. Many customers with GE dishwashers dating back even just ten years or so found that, if the DWs started leaking, the most likely culprit was a small part that could only be replaced as part of a larger $250 assembly.

GE also had/has a corporate staffing policy in which 10-20% of their employees were to be appraised annually as barely capable of doing their jobs and, with that rating, were encouraged to leave the company. I work at a company that was run by a GE alumnus and that rule lasted about a year before it was abandoned.

GE's behavior, sadly, is not atypical. I'm sure there are other companies that do some of those things and I'm sure Whirlpool has made its share of questionable decisions.
But I decided I didn't want to reward with my money any company that does that.

My Grandmother bought a new GE Range in 1970. A few weeks after the warranty expired, something in the oven broke and it went into self clean, with a roast in it, and almost burned her house down. GE wouldn't do anything about it, and since that incident in 1971, she has not bought another GE Appliance. The store she bought it from gave her a free GE Refrigerator in 1973 which broke down over 10 times. In 1999 the Range and Refrigerator were replaced with new Kitchenaid appliances even though they still worked perfectly. The old GE range was top of the line and has features today's ranges don't have.

I have a GE Fashionette Air Conditioner from 1974 that finaly broke in 2004. Which just this year I repaired and cleaned. Now it looks like new.

Also, before the General Electric Refrigerator my Grandmother had a 1965 Whirlpool refrigerator which was just moved in the basement and she still uses it today. It never broke or had any problems and it has been running constantly since 1965.

I would stay very far away from Samsung we moved into new home in 2014 and we bought all Samsung appliances 2 years later they start falling apart one by one with in 4 years period the had to be repaired 4 time 5th time warranty replace all of them.