Hi @rosea, and welcome to the community. You’ve raised a lot of separate points here, and I’ll do my best to respond.
Firstly, why we may recommend an appliance that receives negative user reviews. It’s because our testing is purely performance based - in the case of dishwashers we assess how well the dishwasher washes, and how well it dries, as well as energy and water consumption. This is what informs our scores, and therefore whether or not we recommend a given appliance. For practical reasons we don’t have the ability to assess long term durability (and if we did, there’s a good chance the model in question would have been discontinued by the time our testing was complete), or qualitative factors such as after sales service, warranty support and ease of use - our testing is strictly around performance, which is our point of difference - no one else in Australia can laboratory test products and present independent results. As @PhilT says, Choice reviews are not the be all and end all of product research - we can tell you how well an appliance performs, but it’s important to use a variety of different information sources when researching for a major purchase.
Next, the curious case of the disappearing Miele and Bosch models. As it happens, both Bosch and Miele have turned over their ranges at about the same time, and pretty much all of our previously reviewed models have now been discontinued. Because nothing’s more frustrating than reading a review of a product that can no longer be purchased, we remove them from view on our website (though you can still see historical performance data by selecting the ‘discontinued models’ filter in the product finder). As I’m sure you can appreciate, it takes time to test a dishwasher thoroughly and properly verify the results, but to make up the gap we have just finished testing some of the newer Miele and Bosch models. We’re hoping to have the results available online in the next week or two.
Regarding the LG dishwasher you mention - We have no control over the price of appliances, and they do fluctuate over time. We aim to list the RRP as at time of publishing, both for the magazine and the website, but as the magazine tables are fixed in time the most up to date pricing will be on the website.
As for why it was omitted from the table, at the time of publishing that particular model was not available so we removed it, again to avoid the frustration of reading a review of a product that cannot be found in stores. Subsequently new stock arrived (the pandemic and other factors have had a massive impact on logistics chains around the world, and LG dishwasher supplies were no exception), and we were able to put that model back up on our website.
Similar to pricing, we also have no control over how a manufacturer represents their products on their websites, in terms of whether they’re a new release or not. You can, however, check how long ago a product was registered for sale in Australia (not necessarily the same as the release date though) by checking when it has been registered to on the government’s registration database:
https://reg.energyrating.gov.au/comparator/product_types/
Registrations are for five years, so working backwards from the registered to date will give you this information.
With regard to updating the website to match the magazine, it actually works the other way - as we are able to update the website in real time, it will have the most accurate and up to date information, and should be your first port of call. The magazine is, by the nature of the print medium, a snapshot in time.
I hope this helps.
