The Door Seal Test: Which Appliance Brands Make Spare Parts Findable in the UK?

Most appliances are chosen on three things: price, whether it fits the gap, and how it looks against the cabinets. Then you live with the thing for a decade and discover that the question which actually decides whether you're happy isn't the spin speed. It's whether you can get a £22 door seal in November 2033 without a trade account and a week of phone calls.

That, in a nutshell, is what the right-to-repair conversation is about. The rules have moved, the marketing has moved with them, and the reality on the ground is patchier than either suggests.

What the rules actually require

Since the ecodesign regulations landed in 2021, appliances such as washing machines, washer-dryers, dishwashers and refrigeration have had to meet minimum standards on spare part availability and access to repair information. In broad terms, professional repairers should be able to get hold of the key components for years after the last unit of a model is sold, and certain parts — door gaskets, hinges, filters and the like — should also be obtainable by you and me.

What the legislation does not promise is anything about price, delivery speed, or how pleasant the experience of ordering will be. It doesn't force a brand to put a part number on a public web page, and it doesn't stop a manufacturer routing every purchase through an approved engineer. Those remain commercial choices, and companies make them very differently.

Four questions that separate the good from the grim

When we talk about a brand being 'repairable', what we usually mean is something narrower and more practical:

1. Can I find the part number without a trade login?
2. Can I search by model number and see a price, not a contact form?
3. Does it ship in days rather than 'allow 4–6 weeks'?
4. If it's a part I shouldn't fit myself, is there a clear route to someone who will?

A brand can pass all four and still charge silly money for a plastic hinge. But a brand that fails the first two has effectively made the decision for you: your appliance is a disposable item, whatever the brochure said about German engineering.

The scorecard, by tier

This is a pattern rather than a league table — individual models within the same brand family can behave quite differently, and ranges get refreshed. Use it as a starting point, then verify with the model number you're actually considering.

Tier	What it looks like	What it means for you
Open shelf	Public parts portal, model-number search, price and stock visible, delivery within a few days. Typically the premium European brands and some of the long-established names with big UK spares networks.	You'll probably fix the machine at year eight instead of replacing it.
Trade route	Parts exist and are widely stocked, but through specialist UK spares retailers rather than the brand's own shopfront. Common across the big volume laundry and cooling names.	Fine, provided you're comfortable with a third-party supplier and a bit of part-number detective work.
Service partner only	Parts are available to registered engineers; end users get a phone number and a callout charge. Often seen with brands that lean hard on connected features and sealed modules.	Repairable, but you're renting access to your own appliance. Budget for labour.
Legacy patchy	Parts exist for current ranges but dry up quickly once a model is discontinued, or prices spike in the last third of the support window.	Buy on the assumption of a shorter working life and factor that into the price.

Some names sit comfortably in the top tier — Miele's spares operation is the usual benchmark, and the Bosch/Siemens and Electrolux family portals are genuinely usable. Others, including Beko, Hotpoint and Indesit, are served by a dense network of UK parts stockists, which in practice can be just as quick. The connected-heavy end of the market is where the service-partner model bites hardest.

The three checks worth doing before you pay

Find the model number first. It's on the rating plate, inside the door or on the back. Then search that exact string plus the word 'spares'. If nothing sensible comes back, that's your answer.

Pick the part that always fails and hunt for it. For a washing machine, that's the door seal or the drain pump filter housing. For a dishwasher, the lower spray arm or the inlet valve. For a fridge, the door gasket. For an oven, the door hinge or the fan motor. If a brand can't sell you the cheapest, most commonly replaced part on the machine, the rest of the scorecard is academic.

Check the consumables, not just the components. Water filters, heat-pump lint filters, descaler cartridges and steam-generator seals are the bits you'll be buying repeatedly. A brand that sells them only in multi-packs at £40 a go is telling you something about its business model.

What to ask in the shop

Retailers rarely volunteer this, and it's worth asking anyway: who actually carries out warranty repairs — the brand's own engineers, or a subcontractor covering three counties? Is the extended warranty an insurance product, and does it cover parts that the manufacturer has discontinued? And can they print or email you the exploded parts diagram for the model, or point you at where it lives?

None of that will be on the label in the aisle, which is exactly why it's worth two minutes of your time. A machine that can be fixed in year seven is a different product from one that can't, even if they look identical from the front.

The bottom line

Repairability isn't a badge you can trust and forget. It's a habit — check the part, check the price, check the route — and it takes less time than choosing a colour finish. Do it once per purchase and you'll spend a lot less of the next decade on hold to a call centre.