Appliances have several different class and price is not a good indication of what class things are in. Cheap apartments want the cheapest appliances that will last and those people have the accountants to figure out what those are. However right next to the cheap appliances that last are cheap appliances that won't and often there is nobody that will tell you which is which. The you get into the mid range, where again there is junk and good stuff right next to each other. At the highest prices quality goes down just because there are not enough sales to figure out what is going to break and update the design in the early part of the sales cycle to fix issues.
I agree there are tiers. I don’t believe the tier indicates quality. GE makes great appliances but I think the parts are engineered to last for x number of years rather than the life of the product.
I also doubt my accountant could answer appliance quality questions. The could probably give a depreciation table.