I recently had trouble with dingy and yellowed whites after using strictly Charlie's Soap and Ecover oxygen bleach for a couple of years. I prefer natural detergents, but I bit the bullet and bought some Tide and Tide Stain Release to try to rehab my whites. I used the hottest, longest settings available on my washer and the difference in my whites after just one wash was amazing. Subsequent washes have gotten my whites even whiter, at this point they are back to snowy white.

I do find that Tide can fade dark colored clothing, but it sure does clean whites.

So I've just been using one scoop (a charlie's scoop) of persil mega pearls...is this too little?

I have a W4840. Not familiar with the products you're using, but I'll make some general observations.

You don't say what temperature and options you're using on the Extra White cycle. For items you're trying to "rescue", hotter is better, so use Hot instead of Extra Warm if possible. It's often possible to wash at a higher temperature than the care label says. And some damage from too-hot washing is cumulative, so the risk from doing it only once or twice is lower. Besides, if the articles are too dingy and stained to wear now, you don't have much to lose.

Use the Extended option, which gives a longer wash cycle. Note that the manual says Extended should be used for normal soiling. You certainly want to use it for stuff you're trying to rescue.

You need an adequate dose of bleach for whitening. Non-chlorine (oxygen) bleach can be very effective at higher temperatures (Miele's "Hot" of 140F or hotter, if possible), and it's less toxic and gentler on fabrics than chlorine bleach. I've found little need for chlorine bleach since I got the W4840.

Lastly, in general I don't believe in the idea of using drastically less detergent than recommended by the manufacturer. Very soft water, or small loads, will call for less detergent, but the recommended dose is a good starting point for average water and average loads. The way I see it, detergent packages are labeled for a certain number of loads. It wouldn't make economic sense for the manufacturer to include far more active ingredients than needed for that many loads.

@lmrinc: Did you buy your machine used or new? If new, I'm surprised you got the W4840 since that's a discontinued model. I believe the W4840 was discontinued in Q1 of this year and replaced with the W4842.

What is the hardness of your water? This has a direct impact on how much detergent you use. Dosing is not a big problem with top loaders, since they tend to be more forgiving given the large volume of water they use. However, in a front loader the pool of water is much smaller. After adding detergent you will have a very concentrated pool of cleaning solution in your machine. Add too much detergent and you'll have rinsing issues. Too little detergent and you won't get your clothes very clean.

If you don't know your water hardness, check with your local water company's water quality report. Hardness also goes by terms such as grains and total dissolved solids (TDS). You will see that Megaperls has dosage instructions based on your water's hardness level, so knowing that part of the equation is very important.

Generally speaking, you will get the whitest whites when washing on HOT or Sanitize temps. I use Persil Megaperls Universal w/ sodium percarbonate (same as Ecover non-chlorine bleach) and have very bright whites. Because I have a whole house water softener, my water hardness is ZERO and I use about 3 TBS per large, normally soiled load.

In my experience, dingy whites are caused by insufficient detergent. One tablespoon of Charlie's Soap will work if you have extremely soft water and a smaller capacity machine. If you are using a large capacity front loader (4.0+ cuft) then 2 TBS of Charlie's Soap is probably more appropriate. Charlie's also doesn't work well in hard water conditions. If you have hard water and using only 1 TBS of CS in a big machine, I think that would explain why you had dingy whites. The W4840 won't do anything to get your laundry whiter unless you figure out if you're using enough detergent.

sshriva...it was new and it was the floor model. I called Miele, and they said the only difference was they took express wash out of Master care and on to the main options and switched it with something else.

I'm not sure of the hardness but I just added more scoops to my dark load, with a stinky kitchen towel and a throw so lets hope they come out clean!

I will buy some oxiclean asap! Thanks!

Disucssion continuing in thread below:

Here is a link that might be useful: Laundry 101 basic answers needed