How in the heck does your 5 year old washing machine know you just bought a new fridge and dish washer?????? One day after installing a new replacement dish washer and fridge the washer decides it's time for some love and attention. Just six month's after the extended coverage ends . Tore it down and the spider assembly on the inner drum broke. $300 for the assembly and $236 for the bearing assembly. Well out to the curb it goes, heck a new washer is a couple of hundred more LOL and it's all new. Put that kind of money into it and the motor the timer or something else would surely go. My advice is this,,,,,,,,,,never ever buy a Fridgidaire/Electrolux HE washer, Read many posts today and it seems it's quite a common failure all around 5 to 6 years. Well that's my rant

 

We went back to Maytag last go round, and they have held up well. I got tired of replacing everything every 5 years

 

I've never had great luck with Maytag washing equipment. The driers have been fine.

My burning question t hat no one in the business will answer for me is very simple.

Since Whirlpool acquired Maytag, did Whirlpool's quality go down or did Maytag's quality improve?

 

So far, the washer is after the buyout, and has lasted longer than the whirlpool machines we were buying before. We even went with front loaders last time, which turned out to be an expensive mistake. We are back to bare bones, no frills top loaders again

 

My Maytag topload HE (I won't own one of those front loaders), has been flawless for the last 5 years or so.

Stewart

 

All these modern front loaders (except for very high end ones) have cheap cast aluminum "spider" assemblies. The caustic detergent slowly attacks them until the crack and break.

Some very high end front loaders have stainless steel ones.

 

It's the dark side of smart appliances............

I have a Whirlpool Duet 4.0cf set, and have been quite happy with it. I got the one without the LCD display (most complained about failure point), and have used it mercilessly for nearly three years now. After it was all said and done, I got the set for just over $900, and honestly if I only get another two years out of the washer I would replace it with the same model again.

 

I had a set of conventional Whirlpools for about 12 years and foolishly decided that they needed to be replaced even though I had no issues with them. I bought a conventional set of Maytags and only got 4 years before the washer went kaput. I WILL NOT put money to washing machine / dishwasher repair. Simply not worth it.

So, in 2004 I bought a set of Maytag Neptunes. Great service so far except the control panel on the dryer was replaced under warranty.

The thing I love most about t he front load washer is being able to load all the chemicals at once and walk away. It cleans well though I think the top loaders clean better. It uses about 9-10 gallons of water in a complete cycle whereas a top loader uses a significant amount of water. I'm guessing 30+ gallons per load.

By the time you pay the price for a front loader set, any savings in the water bill may be negated by the higher initial cost. I'm not certain if I'll go this route again.

 

All of them these days seem so efficient at saving water that they don't get your clothes clean.

 

Let me tell you my experience with Maytag.
We bought a brand new washer and two years later it starts to leak. My brother works at the business where we bought it from and he said it would cost more to fix than to buy new. About that time my grandma was going into LTC and we bought her Maytag washer that was about a year old and had few gone through very few cycles. A couple months later, the solenoid that stops the water going into the tub went out. Yep, we had water everywhere. My brother told us not to buy another Maytag again as he sees problems with Maytag appliances. My wife had also bought a side-by-side Maytage 'fridge. That thing won't keep cold in the summer and freezes in the winter. The tech says its fine.....
My mom bought a Maytag chest freezer. Before the warranty ran out, it stopped cooling and she had to call my brother out to solder in a fill valve to add more freon. (He's a HVAC tech and did it on shop time) It did it again a few months later and they had to haul the deep freeze back to the shop to find out there is a leak in the wall and it can't be repaired. They added a stop-leak and told her to try it. Of course it stopped cooling again. When she hit them up for the warranty, they told her that that...surprise, surprise....the warranty has expired and she is SOL.
We've all learned our lesson, although we are not saying that any other brand would be better. Everything is now built on a price instead of quality. We do know that we won't be buying another Maytag appliance, especially when they weasel out of their warranty work.

 

Heading out to Lowes to see what they have. Did some extensive research yesterday and am surely going with top load HE this time. No more bull crap spider assemblies for me. I think they really just suck you in with the extended coverage. Over the years always bought GE appliances and got minimum of 10 yrs out of them. When the parts to repair a machine are the best part of $600 doing the work yourself there`s something drastically wrong with that. Those spider assemblies should not be cast crap they should be forged steel or stainless.

 

I have always bought Kenmore appliances and had good service out of them. My last washer/dryer went for 12 years before the dryer died, so I bought a new set. I've now had them for four years, and I did have to get the dryer control replaced under warranty when it was just under a year old. I like Kenmore and will continue to buy them as long as they keep giving me good service.

 

Sears is an option for sure. Always a reputable company to deal with and stands firmly behind their products

 

IIRC, Kenmore appliances are made by Whirlpool.

 

I have a Maytag washer obtained from my father-in-law when he moved out of his house to a condo 15 years ago. It was at least 10 years old when we got it. Replaced the drive belt once maybe 10 years ago, Works like a champ.