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Post by markkw on Jul 28, 2011 19:56:43 GMT -5
I thought it was just me but I belong to a site dedicated to design engineering and within the past few days there's been an explosion of complaints about household appliances that totally suck. Our three year old Kenmore refrigerator almost burned our house down and ruined a lot of food because it overheated in the automatic coil defrost cycle and the alleged failsafe thermal fuse did not open - got hot enough to burn the powdercoat off cover panel. Our HotPoint clothes drier that rarely gets used suddenly started pulling 46 amps on one leg of the 240Vac - opened it up to find out the coilspring element was not properly attached to the ceramic standoffs allowing it to come in contact with the steel housing. Was a high-resistance short causing the drier to overheat and come very close to overheating before the high-limit overload finally tripped. There's an awful lot of complaints about Maytag & Whirlpool appliances crapping out or not working right out of the box. One of the fellows took the Energy Star ratings to task, upon testing his hot water heater, refrigerator and deep freeze, he found the label information was nowhere even close to being correct, all three appliances used about 30-60% more energy than claimed on the Energy Star label.
Anyone like to chime in on this?
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Post by ral on Jul 28, 2011 21:34:32 GMT -5
I bought a Magic Chef dishwasher leaked from day one and after six attempts to repair it. They finally replaced it and the new one leaked too, replaced again with a different model that worked great the first two times, died in mid-cycle on the third use. First time the repair man came out he ordered a controller, he returned four more times over the next 7 weeks before getting the correct controller only to have it go up in smoke when he turned it on. At this point I wanted it gone, took over a year of fighting with the store to finally get most of my money back. Now I just do my dishes by hand but I have more cabinet space. Yeah!
R.A.L.
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Post by franz on Aug 13, 2011 1:18:16 GMT -5
I wish the appliance quality issue was new.
In 1950 my parents bought a new GR refrigerator, it was still in use in 1990 when it got replaced for want of finding a new door gasket.
In 64 I bought my Mom the stove of her dreams. genuine KitchenAid, stainless top, burner with a brain and a clock operated oven she wanted and never knew why she needed it. That was good because the clock couldn't operate the oven because the engineers designed the clock system for electric stoves. They also sold it on gas stoves, it just wasn't connected.
The factory service man made 3 attempts and stopped answering calls. I figured it out by pulling the damn stove apart and calling the manufacturer.
It also had a Burner with a brain. Thermal sensor sat against the bottom of the pot and operated the burner, great idea in theory, better idea if you were a fireman who wanted to practice at home.
The burner was a retard, and it couldn't be fixed.
They also used the wrong grade of stainless which began to rust in 3 years.
Bought a kitchenaid dishwasher too, stainless tub. Wonderful machine till the pump contraption rotted off the tub from electrogalvanic action. Tub had a 20 year warranty, but the pump didn't.
In 96 I bought a new Kitchenaid. They lost a lot of money shipping me 5 replacements in the first 6 months. They finally gave me a full refund. I found a good one made by Hobart in a garage sale for $50- and it still works.
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