You always have to leave the door open…
I picked this up from my parents.
When I moved out, I lived with a flatmate for a few years and I left the washing machine door open after using it and my flatmate closed it.
I explained to her why I left it open and she just stared back at me. Not once had she ever thought of this and said it made so much sense. She is about 20 years my senior.
Certain habits seem to be so obvious, but unless handed down, someone may never even think of it.
Reminds me of that guy that never thought to let the shower water get warm before stepping in.
Huh… I have a top loader and grew up with one so it’d never occur to me this is needed, since with a top loader there’s no reason to close it, it doesn’t get in the way by being open
I’m glad I saw this thread, if I ever have a front loader now I’ll know to leave it open :)
If you ever need a new one, front loaders tend to fit more and I believe they’re more efficient too. Plus if a top loader grenades itself, it might be a pain to get your laundry out if the drum doesn’t move anymore. Front loaders are more expensive though.
Front loaders also wash better.
Totally fair about habits being passed down. However, I lived with someone who I had to explain the whole leave the washer open 2 or 3 times over the course of a couple years. She’d even complain about the smell. She was one dense mother fucker tho.
As well as the hatch where the detergent goes in. Otherwise it will get swampy in there. That part of the post kinda makes me wonder if maybe her mother just takes better care of hers.
I take the detergent tray out after every wash so it dries properly. Occasionally wipe the tray slot down if it needs it, and wash the tray. Seen a few horrible swamps in shared housing over college years.
You know the funny thing?
You can still buy appliances that last and have good service.
But you don’t earn enough to afford them, like your parents did.
This is not the case. Washers used to be more expensive as a proportion of median income back then. According to this page a new Kenmore washer cost $289 in 1980. The median family income in 1980 was $21,023, so a new washer would cost 1.37% of a family’s annual income. Compare to now, where the median household income is $83,150. As a proportion of median income, a $289 washer in 1980 would cost about $1500 today, which is about what a durable, well made washer with a 7 year warranty costs. Manufactured goods were largely more expensive compared to wages in the past.
Median income isnt the whole story as rent, transportation, medical, and other costs have increased at a greater rate so people dont have the money to buy the 1500 dollar washing machine.
That is true to an extent, but the main point is that it’s not like the past was a glorious land of milk and honey where everything was cheaper and easier. I am always amazed when I see how much things used to cost back then compared to incomes, especially TVs and other electronics. That’s a big part of the “built to last” reputation of older goods- they were literally built better, but they were also priced accordingly. A cheap appliance back then was a used one. There simply wasn’t an option to buy a cheap one new.
That is very nice of you, looking up the numbers stating exactly what i said. thanks.
No. I am saying that these well made appliances are just as affordable today as they were back then, but most people want the cheaply made alternatives, and manufactured goods were generally less affordable back then than they are now. People generally just had less stuff in the past, and paid more for it. You simply couldn’t buy a new washer for the same fraction of your income as the cheap ones today. A lot of things are worse for us economically than for our parents but this simply isn’t one of them.
I understood that. the point you don’t understand is that people today HAVE LESS MONEY than their parents.
Do you know what median means?
wow, you actually don’t understand it. Fascinating. Lets get simple:
70s : Expensive appliance, works long time. can afford it.
Today: Cheap appliance, breaks early, can afford.
Also Today: Expensive appliance, works long time. can’t afford it.I don’t think i can make it any easier.
Meh. Buy them second hand. Not even joking. As you said, good one last forever. while there’s a bit of a logistics difficulty with second hand large appliances, you can also just rent a van for the day and ask a friend for help.
Problem is you don’t know how well it was maintained /cared for by its former owner.
You should be able to get parts, though. It’s better to replace a part on a machine that will last 20 years than a part on one that will last 5 years.
Only if it’s worth fixing instead of replacing the thing outright. If you have a cheap washer, it may be cheaper to just get another, rather than having to call the repairman and get parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory applies…
A Speed Queen set sure would be nice to have.
Similar story for clothes dryers:
My parents’ dryer had 2 knobs for temperature and run time, and a start button. Ran forever and dried clothes.
My dryer has like a dozen programmed cycles that rely on a moisture sensor that doesn’t work and leaves clothes damp unless you use the manual time & temp settings, which takes several capacitive button presses on a circuit board that is likely to die before any of the actual mechanical components of the dryer. Also for some reason it has Wi-Fi.
“And for some reason it has Wi-Fi .” will be the last line in humanity’s epitaph.
The latest xkcd has one of my favorite hover texts of all time:
It’s important for devices to have internet connectivity so the manufacturer can patch remote exploits.
I can confirm, I only use the manual time on my dryer because it’s the only way to reliably get it dry.
Wifi is there to avoid pressing the capacitive buttons.
I assume they have some better mode options if you get the app and connect it and all…
Never
The washer and dryer at my mom’s are 30 years old. She’s had repairmen laugh at her for having them, but they’re much better made than anything new.
Newer machines are several times more water and energy efficient.
Still nice that they lasted long and were easier to repair.
More water and energy efficient to run, yes. If you have to replace them every couple of years the resources used to make new ones need to be included too though, and that will have a big impact on the comparison. That said, I have had a modern front load pair for at least 5 years now, no issues.
The resources used to make anything should always be included; called embodied energy.
Of course. Those resources are just a much larger impact percentage wise on an appliance replaced every two years vs 25.
In the 2008 economic slump, the U.K. had something called a “car scrappage scheme”. Shit was the most wasteful thing ever. Also saw really cool classics cubed.
USA had the same thing, “Cash for Clunkers”. Some of the cars we were better off getting rid of. Some of them not, whether because they were rare or classic, or old but still more fuel efficient than a truck or SUV. Sure increased the average price of a used car though.
You could find driveable used cars for ~$700 before. Even accounting for inflation now, all you can find now are mechanic specials and parts only.
The newer more efficient machines also give worse washing results.
there are calculations and tables on exactly this, when a machine is to be replaced. Including production and shipment of a new one etc., some should be replaced. Look it up!
Efficiency does little for your wallet and the environment if you need to buy/produce a new machine every few years.
(Not to say that we shouldn’t strive for efficiency.)
That’s the same way i look at it. How much energy is involved in building a new washing machine? How much energy is spent scrapping it? So much waste. I recently had a run of energy-efficient washing machines that all had the same problem with the main CPU board. In 2 weeks i had 4 instances all come out of the woodwork. Only 1 opted for the repair but it cost them almost as much as a new washer. The rest got scrapped. These washers were all about 2 years old when i witnessed this phenomenon (and I ran into yet another one just a couple weeks ago)… Other techs online are sharing similar reports.
Not only are they over-engineering the fuck out of these things for “energy efficiency” which i swear is just an umbrella they use to cover their real goals–to make appliances less user and tech friendly. They want their guys selling their overpriced junk and bespoke computers/sensors/gizmos so they can extract every last cent of value out of the product, then try to sell you another one every 3-5 years almost like leasing a car.
Still, that doesn’t mean the tech used to extract greater efficiency is a bad idea – it’s all the approach they take to get there. They’re making the cheapest tech possible while trying to sell it for the most $. These digital electronics they design to handle the various functions that give them such energy efficiency are often made with design flaws that aren’t worked out before release and/or they’re made with the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel components and/or manufacturing standards. If they wanted to make nearly-indestructible computers and sensors and transmissions and motors they absolutely could. They could even make them extremely energy efficient as well, but it’s simply not gonna happen.
Energy efficiency is a valid goal, but if that’s really what they’re going for they need to make some major changes to the way they’re approaching it. The engineers in these companies are too smart for this to be the best they can do.
Plus these fancy new machines can’t even wash a fucking blanket (unbalanced every time, no matter what I do).
I haven’t had an issue with an unbalanced load since I started using a front loader. Mine washes all our blankets without issue other than the >15# weighted blankets, and that’s just me not wanting to risk my washer to not go to the Laundromat.
Obviously
If repairman laugh at durable machinery they either just want your money or don’t care about longevity. My father usually tells people to keep the old one if it’s still working cuz the newer ones break down after a year or two and suck to repair (simple stuff just replaced with electronics that you have to replace whole for half the price of the whole machine).
(simple stuff just replaced with electronics that you have to replace whole for half the price of the whole machine).
Not to mention the waste it creates… In theory it can be recycled. In practice electronic waste is not recycled at the level you’d expect…
As a repair guy that gives a shit about his customers, i encourage folks to fix their older appliances when feasible. I prefer the older stuff and find them to be easier to diagnose and repair a lot of the time.
A couple years ago i had an elderly lady with a Kitchen Aid washer and dryer that were in pristine condition. Based on some lookups, i determined the units to be 37 years old. Until that day, neither unit had been serviced once. Dryer needed a new door switch, lol. To be fair though, i got another call on the dryer a couple years later and it had a bad motor. Almost 40 years with virtually trouble-free operation! They loved the unit and didn’t want to deal with the flimsy bullshit on the market today so they opted to repair it. I overhauled the dryer in addition to replacing the motor and it’s quiet as the day it was new. What a well-built machine!
Oldest dryer i still service has to be from the 60’s or something – one of those old Maytag dryers that just has the timer in the center of the control panel and you push the timer in to start it. I swear the motors on some of those old units may never die, lol.
Your parents washing machine also cost more because it was made better. The best price I could find for a standard washing machine in 1980 was $289. To put that into perspective, according to CPI inflation that is the equivalent of about $1,100 today. As a proportion of median individual income, that’s like $1,550 today. You can still buy a Speed Queen washer for consumers that costs $1,500 and will last a long time, but people largely don’t because the shitty one costs less than half of that.
This the argument I have with clients on a daily basis, in regards to all kinds of manufactured goods. People are astoundingly awful at understanding and visualizing inflation and the value of a dollar over time, even people who are specifically educated on this point and even work with it as part of their jobs. Everyone has some threshold beyond which they absolutely won’t countenance paying more than $X for Y, but this is always arbitrary and whenever the course of events drives the median price of whatever-it-is past that line they lose their minds.
Durable goods manufacturing is a race to the bottom because it has to be in order to overcome everyone’s moronic preconceptions about what a product “ought” to cost. This isn’t just a capitalist greed thing, although it’s certainly that, too – corners have to be cut, panels have to be made thinner, it has to contain more plastic and less metal, because otherwise it’ll never be cheap enough for 99% of the population to agree to buy it and even then they’ll all still bitch about how shoddily made it is. Year over year every manufacturer has to figure out how to make it cheaper to slide under MSRP. The manufacturers who take the opposite strategy inevitably wind up as niche players, because as much as people spout that they’d happily pay more for a better built thing, the flat out truth is they’re all full of shit and to the nearest decimal point, none of them actually will if given the opportunity.
The problem is it is rarely an easy proposition to just “pay more and get a better product” especially when it comes to home appliances.
In most big box stores every option will be shit. Companies know that there are consumers at every price point and so they have a product for every price print.
The problem is the expensive isn’t really better, it’s the same fridge with the same compressor as a cheap one except it has a wifi dongle or a tablet in the door.
Of course there are the Vikings and Thermidors and whatever but those are Velben goods that priced so high that you could get 5 to 10 of the cheap options for the price of one.
Yeah you have to do research but thankfully we also live in a time when most people have high power computers connected to the Internet on their person at all times. You can buy a cheaply made expensive wi-fi enabled “smart” appliance that costs even more than a well built “dumb” appliance and will fail incredibly fast because of all the computerized parts. You just have to do some research.
You can also buy really good machines that last forever, you just have to pay a lot more. To me it seems the guy complaining just buys the cheapest washing machine build and delivered by slave workes from Amazon
Problem is you can’t trust anything. The fancy $2k machine might just be fancy in name. You don’t know if stuff is good before it starts not being. And reviews don’t help, because they won’t test a product for 5 years to check durability before posting
The speed queen I mentioned comes with a 7 year warranty and they’re the brand used by laundromats who need them to be reliable to make money. That said, the consumer grade ones are not as solidly built as the commercial units, but that’s because nobody is going to put laundromat levels of abuse on their home washing machine.
I spent a thousand dollars replacing the cheap compressor in my fridge because I asked the repair guy to replace it with better quality than it originally came with, and he used a commercial (as opposed to residential) grade compressor that was three times the price
But aside from a short lifetime, the big problem with cheap AC motors is they’re imprecisely built and often waste more electricity as heat and noise than they put into their output shaft
Of course even with the better stuff there still “cot death” where a new product fails almost immediately (because noone tests their products), but at least those failures are under warranty, the cheap motors typically last at least a few years
I spent a thousand dollars replacing the cheap compressor in my fridge
So was it worth it? How long ago did you do it and what are the differences you’ve noticed so far?
It should work for ages, compared to the cheap compressor that came with the fridge that lasted 3 years. It’s a thousand dollar fridge new, so the repair was about the cost of replacing it, but I won’t need to replace it in another 3 years
I did this only two weeks ago, so all I really have is expectations
It’s less noisy than the previous compressor
!remindme a decade
Hope it outlasts you (200 years!!)
Hope our instances last that long
You can go buy those old washing machines. They’re still out there. I got my washer and dryer used for 100 dollars each.
Nothing digital on them, all analog. Fixed a washer overflowing issue by replacing the $20 pressure level switch. Twice I’ve had to replace the heating element for the dryer, $20 bucks for those. Everything is replaceable with a flat head screwdriver and a youtube video.
Go buy those old washers and dryers.
The old order Amish are still using the 1940s Maytag wringer washers. They convert them to gas engines and run the exhaust outside.
Here in Europe we use thousand year old slaves to do ours.
Missed that, what’s the joke?
This is like that fridge post from yesterday…
The difference is that…cheap washing machines didn’t exist. Good modern washing machines last a long time while not wasting money and electricity.
You can’t compare the only available appliances of the 70s to the bottom-of-the-barrel now
No. That’s not what’s happening here.
And just for the record I am an appliance repair tech for the last 20 years.
Hands down appliances from the early 90s to about the 2010s are significantly better than new appliances today.
They are better in everyway. They were made under a different philosophy, they were made to be fixed.
When I stated my career in 2004 I would have a box of common parts that would break for each kind of appliance I would service. Fridge, washer, dryer ext. I wouldn’t have to order a part for weeks. I would just drive down to the parts supplier stock up and move on to my next work order. Now all I do is order proprietary parts that are dedicated to one specific model number.
The materials and build quality of older appliances far exceeds that of new ones so much so that I am actually recommending to my clients that they try to find a used appliance rather than buy a new one because it’ll probably last longer.
And I’ve had this argument so many times already on this platform the savings on energy are absolutely negligible. They can easily be ignored. To clarify the way they notate change in energy is by percentages so it’ll appear that an appliance is saving 70% more energy but in reality that saving is stretched across 365 days which equates to maybe 25 to 30 cents of savings a day. Or it’ll look like you’re saving 400 kilowatt hours but again stretched across 365 days that’s just over 1 kilowatt hour a day.
The only caveat is the fact that washers use less water which can actually turn into some kind of savings over the course of the year because your water heater will have to heat less water but that’s about it.
Generally I fix appliances that are less than 10 years old most of those are refrigerators the extreme vast majority of those are Samsung appliances.
Not a repair tech, but this matches my experience maintaining and repairing my appliances. My early 80s whirlpool range and oven have had small issues here and there, but generally require swapping one part hidden behind some screws and will take under an hour. My Samsung dishwasher not only does a piss poor job, it also throws LC codes every few days. After the fourth time pulling it from the cabinet I had to put a series of shims to lift the leak sensor off the drip tray and buy a separate Wi-Fi moisture detector. My Samsung fridge (4yo) has a broken door ice dispenser and intermittently decides not to dispense water too. Old LG unit had a linear compressor that shit the bed three times before they refused to do any more warranty work on it.
Ya… The liner compressors on lgs were bad. They did resolve that issue though so it’s not a problem anymore.
Man… Used to do a lot compresor 3-4 times a week.
the extreme vast majority of those are Samsung appliances.
Bro, fuck the Samsung fridge engineers that decided my ice machine doesn’t need to actually be properly insulated and designed an ice box that’s basically going to break and it’s only a matter of time.
I have to keep reminding myself to defrost and clean it out. Last time it got so bad I couldn’t even take the ice tray out without a ton of force. Then I melted the ice but derped and warped the little guide post thingy with heat. Had a tech come out and say it’s unfixable, cool time flushing my money down the toilet … After that I did what I should have done and just reheated it again and bent it and voila problem (I made) solved.
But seriously I hate that fridge with a passion. So much so I’m going out of my way to never buy Samsung again, their customer care is atrocious and quality is hit or miss. I have some Samsung appliances that have been bulletproof so far but I genuinely don’t want to have to cross my fingers their QA didn’t fail because trying to deal with their support for anything is a Kafkaesque hell.
Use a steamer instead of a blow-dryer or heat gun, next time. I just had to defrost my Samsung freezer to fix a leak, no warping with the steamer.
Ya… I tell my clients that Samsung fridges aren’t going to make ice. That’s just the way they’re made.
Samsung makes the worst fridge period. Their other appliances are fine. Very middle of the road. But their fridges suck ass.
Agree, I have other Samsung appliances and they’re just fine. Just the fridge is a goddamn nightmare.
But isn’t your sample biased because you’re a repair tech? People with working appliances don’t call you.
How often do you encounter, for example, a broken Miele washing machine?
We work on very very little Miele. So much so that I only encountered the brand a handful of times and have no recollection as to how those repairs went which usually means I didn’t come back to do said repairs.
However, Miele has a very good reputation for reliability.
Cuz nobody can afford them, or they just don’t do real sales numbers in your geo, or because they’re phenomenal……. I wonder!
This new washer is High Efficiency!
btw you’ll want to run a double extra rinse if you don’t want the clothes to immediately stink when you open the washer cough yes super HE
I want to start an appliance company that offers 10 year warranties with an additional 5 year replaceable parts availability promise. The designs will be simple, functionality simple with minimal quality of life improvements, and all repair manuals will be published on the website along with tutorial videos, while also banking on building a product that simply lasts longer.
I’m willing to bet that if that is what you advertise on, the longevity of the product at a minimal price, then the company should do fine.
This was unironically Maytag, they enshitified with the rest. The Maytag man was a real thing.
You won’t. You’ll get annihilated by the next Chinese competitor who produces a piece of shit machine that breaks in 13 months like clockwork (and has a 12 month warranty), but sells for 1/2 or 2/3 of the price of your machine.
The average consumer is dogshit at conceptualizing the actual value of a product over its lifetime in proportion to its cost. They’ll just see that the next machine on display at Best Buy or whatever looks modern and costs less to buy up front, and then they’ll buy that one. When it breaks they’ll bitch and moan on Facebook and Nextdoor and write ranty one star reviews everywhere, and then wheel right back to Best Buy and buy another machine just like it.
At the end of the day these are commodity items. It’s reasonable for consumers to buy whatever’s cheapest from a reputable physical store and expect at least decent reliability.
The solution can’t come from a manufacturer making a better product, because of the information asymmetry; the average consumer just can’t be expected to spend hours researching every commodity item.
The solution has to be targeted legislative action with a clear goal of measurably improving the overall reliability of those commodities. Unfortunately lobbyists hate that because more reliability = less margin and fewer sales, and consumers don’t often love it either because this kind of legislation directly translates to inflated prices (at least in the short term). There are still people bitching that you can’t buy incandescent lightbulbs anymore… So regulators would rather play dead and hope nobody notices they are doing fuck-all.
Weirdly enough, the washing machines I’ve seen here in China aren’t that cheap, like 800-1500 USD price range, and they tend to be much smaller than the US ones.
Stuff made in China for domestic use bears little to no resemblance to the stuff that Chinese factories are contracted to make for export.
So much so that two doors down from my work is a place that does a booming business whose sole purpose is to allow people in China to purchase made-in-China stuff that’s only sold in the US that they can’t get at home and ship it back to China. It sounds absolutely asinine but there’s a huge market for it and those guys are busy all day long packing stuff up and cramming into shipping containers to send right back to where it was made… but can’t be bought.
Incredibly clever, businessfolk & manufacturers in China. Some will tell you “hoverboards” were essentially invented in the bars of Shenzhen.*
Are external factors preventing them from selling directly to the audience you’re describing?
Edit: *source
Bizarre. I wonder why they go all the way to the US instead of Vietnam or Taiwan.
Good luck getting affordable steel or aluminum for manufacturing in this economy. If you do have some investors/capital, though, I would love to apply as an engineer. I think a good selling point would be displaying them in-store with the panel open, or training distributors to open them as demonstration, showing how reliable it is and how easy they are to service.
Your product would be about three times the price of the cheap shit.
It might work in the current world with good advertising - Smarter Every Day (on YouTube) is part of a project to make a better, made in America, barbeque brush cleaner
There are a few companies now selling better quality stuff successfully, but I have seen no one doing so in whitegoods
Buy European: Miele, Rex Electrolux, Beko (Turkish, don’t get into that), Smeg, Candy, AEG, etc…
Don’t want to jinx it, but my Electrolux washer-dryier is 7 years old and still like new, despite being relatively cheap and despite combined machines being more problematic.
Candy
Buy European and not cheap
Our super cheap Candy (Washer and a drier) has been going for 5 years now without issue 🤷 Though i’d buy a different brand if i had to again and wasn’t pressed for money, I am definitely surprised how well it’s doing.
I had a very different experience with the brand (washing machine actively trying to kill me, for exemple)
Maybe there’s a difference between the different factories making them ?
that could be, or maybe I got lucky. In any case, I’m not complaining. i remember it was like 750 bucks for both machines, and with other brands it would have been 800-1200 for a single machine
Reddit nitpickers have moved over
Smeg
They make acceptable and pretty toasters and similar appliances, but avoid this brand like a plague for fridges
I have a 7-year old fridge from them, bought discounted at the appliance outlet because of damaged packaging, it’s still like new and sips electricity. It’s a basic model, brushed stainless, no displays or anything.
Interesting, I heard plenty of horror stories about their fridges being low quality.
It’s such an unfortunate name. They really need to rebrand.
I heard the guy who founded the company was a real smeghead
My Euromaid is a decade old. Had to replace a $30 part after 5 years, but no other issues.
Candy
Haier bought it in 2018
My Bosch washing machine is eight years old and works fine.
That’s because Whirlpool bought up all of the competition. Whirlpool, Kenmore, Maytag, Amana, JenAir, Roper, Kitchenaid etc are all the same company and the competition they didn’t buy has less incentive to produce much better units because now they have to compete with cheaper built machines.
They didn’t buy up Bosch (to my knowledge) but maybe they’re not in the us?
or LG, who are currently the leaders in reliability.
Everytime this kind of topic comes up, it’s always Miele that gets mentioned.
for sure!
You can get a rough estimate of how much of those reliability figures are down to absolute scattershot luck of the draw, because Roper’s (Whirlpool) only laundry machines on the market are literally rebadges of the only Amana machines (also Whirlpool) with no mechanical changes whatsoever, but they score “better.” Squinting at that image, it appears Amana is possibly #20.
Also, the Kenmore bar is complete bullshit since Kenmore/Sears never manufactured a single appliance at any point in history. Every Kenmore model is actually a rebadge of some other manufacturer’s product (handy lookup chart located here) so the build methodology can vary wildly from model to model. So the fact that these are not separated out into their actual brands given how trivial this is to do indicates to me once again that Consumer Reports does not actually have any idea what the hell they’re doing.
Even if you want to group things just by their nameplate since that’s what the consumer will see, fine. But those examples in particular need to have a big fat asterisk next to them and an explanation of what’s actually going on behind the scenes.
It’s possible that consumer’s perception of reliability is affected by warranty and how well/quick repairs are made, which might be a point of difference. There’s also possibly binning of parts going on, with higher reliability batches going into one brand over the other.
I have a Miele vacuum, what a beast (light and sturdy and powerful), never regretted buying it, way over a decade old maybe 15 years.
This is some bullshit. You can go to Home Depot or Lowe’s right now and get yourself a pretty decent washing machine for $600 that will last you a decade.
The only people who end up in the situation like OP are the people who buy overly cheap products or overly gimmicky products, and then wonder why they don’t work as well as the standard products. If you buy a $150 washing machine from AliExpress or buy a washing machine that requires wifi, then don’t be surprised if they stopped working not too long after you bought them.
This is my mother in law to a tee, she buys second hand washing machines on craigslist for $100 - 200 they last about a year and she buys a new one. Always complaining about “planned obsolescence”. I keep telling her “no one is selling a good used washing machine, they had problems with it and got a new one” Meanwhile she criticizes me for spending $700 on a washing machine we have had for 10 years now.
She has a saying “poor people have poor ways” which she thinks means that when your poor you work with what you have, I have told her it is an insult that means poor people are poor because of their actions and decisions.
Boots theory
My child is named after Vimes
Exactly what I was gonna say.
She has a saying “poor people have poor ways” which she thinks means that when your poor you work with what you have, I have told her it is an insult that means poor people are poor because of their actions and decisions.
I think you could maybe use less time on the Internet. Social media has a nasty habit of telling everyone that everything they hear is a code for something else; spend too long reading that junk and it’ll convince you that everyone in the world is a secret bigot.
Dogwhistles are real bestie. I think this says way more about you, than the person you’re replying to.
What was described here clearly wasn’t an instance of one though. It was two different people reading a saying two different ways.
Lol, considering I heard it all the time growing up in the 80s you might be a bit off on your assessment.
I grew up in a middle class suburb where the it was used as an insult kinda like " poor people are poor because they are stupid"
She grew up in the Ozarks and they used it more as a " we got ways to make do"
One of these days I hope to eventually own a home. When I do, I want to buy one of the industrial-ass washing machines and dryers they use in laundromat and hotels. I’m sure it will be very expensive, but I firmly believe in “buy once, cry once”. I want a laundry machine that is built to run 24/7 for 10+ years. Used at a personal pace, it should last forever.
Monkey’s paw: It is made to run 24/7 for 10 years, but you run it every 3 days, which makes it degrade faster.
For real now, probably not like that, but found it funny. Anyone knows how the phenomenon is called?
Inkjet printer disease.
I’d just buy a good solid brand, a hotel one might also not have the few programs/temperature you’ll need but blast everything at 60° or 90°.
It will also use much more energy and water, because they’re built to wash extremely quickly, efficiency be damned.
This isn’t true at all. Laundromats have to pay for water and electricity, that eats into their profits.
Water and electricity is cheap compared to other cost (location, wages). It is more profitable to have more customers per machine per day.
Honestly buy something that is good quality but doesn’t have stupid shit, do I need my washing machine and my toaster talking to each other? No but the stripped down no frills ones are normally built to be as absolutely cheap as possible.
Damn. So if you have money, you get decent products. Thanks for the great reminder.
More expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better. You could easily spend $2000 on some “smart” washing machine, but that doesn’t mean it’s better than a standard $500 washing machine. I would argue that a lot of these gimmicks actually make the products worse.
Not AliExpress, but fucking Samsung. They may appliances with all the cool smart features and they’re everywhere, but holy shit are they terrible for reliability (both per my own experience and according to repair people I’ve talked with).
Dunno.
My samsung washing machine is now 9 years old with zero problems.
I think its mostly a bias. If manufactorer-A sells 10 apliances and manufactorer-B sells only one, its means repair people should also see 10 machines from A for every machine from B
Every single one of my Samsung appliances work great. Most notably my washing machine and dryer. Never had a single hickup in the ~6 years I’ve had them. A lot of the time people have issues with stuff, is because they don’t take care of their machine, and expect an appliance will run reliably for 10+ years with 0 maintenance. They don’t.
There’s some people in this thread who’ve had shocking bad luck with their appliances and think it’s normal. The only appliances I’ve ever had break in the last few decades were either already decades old or broke because I did something dumb.
Mine does pretty music when done!
I have a video on my phone of a guy playing the tune on guitar to prank his wife/girlfriend!
Survivorship bias is a heck of a drug.
There’s no comparison between an old Maytag washer and dryer and a new/current Maytag washer and dryer. This is a case where survivorship bias does not apply, imo. Appliances were built more durable back in the day. There are plenty of older appliances working just fine today while some stuff under 5 years is already getting scrapped because it’s too expensive to fix and/or parts aren’t even available. It’s total nonsense
Your penultimate statement is an absolutely textbook example of survivorship bias.
The average lifespan of a washer has declined a little but the frequency of use during that lifespan has increased measurably.
I’m seeing 20+year old machines taking the same work load as newer machines a fraction of their age and they’re still going just fine while some of the new ones are breaking for no reason outside shitty electronics and/or plastic garbage components. I guess it is survivorship bias. Whatever the case i still can’t take anyone seriously when they claim modern appliances are better than the older stuff. Reliability is a key feature of an appliance but also serviceability in the long term and neither of those are features of modern appliances (at least prole-grade appliances like i work on)
The appliances from 30 years ago that fell apart early aren’t here to tell their tale.
A shame because they’re still fixable all these years later while the new shit is going obsolete before your very eyes
You really are having a struggle with the concept of survivorship bias aren’t you?
Nope. You’re both correct and you are the one who fails to understand that not everything is an either-or situation.
Especially when both of your points are merely related and not in direct opposition. Old appliances were more generic and more robust, but only an idiot with survivorship bias would say all old appliances were bullet proof.
Yes
We keep having to replace the logic board on our dryer.
Motherfucker, your job is to get hot and spin. I want the old “egg-timer that flips a switch” tech to come back.
A good dryer senses the moisture and adjusts the heat so it dosnt shrink your clothes and you dont have to take them out damp and hang them anyway, throws in a few reverse spins so clothes dry more evenly, and some other stuff Im sure.
But generally are built like shit.
It really depends, Ive stayed at hostels where the machines run 3+x a day and sometimes some machines will be 5+ years old. There doesnt seem to be any rhyme or reason as far as brand or usage pattern, though I’ve never seen an old combination unit.
Don’t buy American washers, I think only speed queen still bothers with quality.
Also don’t get a Samsung one from what I hear. Apparently LG is okay.
LG appliances are disposable. The South Korean companies want you on the new appliance replacement schedule as your cell phone.
Actually yes. Samsung makes pretty bad appliances although their washers and dryers in my opinion are fine.
But, in a surprise turn of events LG makes really good appliance across the board. I recommend them to my clients.
Anecdotally, I loathe my LG and am trying to figure out what to replace it with.
I have replaced the drain pump on it 5 times, because they did a terrible job designing the strainer basket, and the impeller is very fragile. It only takes a few strands of long hair to reach 3/4" past the strainer basket to tangle and break the impeller.
It’s also an all in one, but the dryer functionality was clearly designed as a bolt on afterthought. There’s no lint filter so inevitably lint builds up and choked off airflow. Then the air temp gets hot enough to melt the front boot.
When we first got the unit, our 40psi water pressure ruptured two internal hoses because lg couldn’t be bothered to use fiber reinforced hoses. Dealing with potential water damage so lg could save a few cents is not worth it.
I will actively avoid LG going forward.
Which one did you get? All I’ve heard are good things from LGs current washer/ dryers
WM3477HW
I love the all in one concept, but this machine has made me reluctant to get one again.
There’s a GE all in one with heat pump drying that I think would be the functionality I want, but the machine is huge.
Ah I see, I feel like lot has changed since that model (nervously looking at my LG). Just remember that current heat pump dryers still have issues with lint clogging the coils dispite the filters and coil cleaning systems.
Get a washer from a brand that has made washers for more than a decade.
If you’re paying for an LG I’d say get a speed queen top loader and enjoy not having to worry about your washer again,
I bought an LG washer and drier set over 25 years ago. They’ve been around.
They were totally fine and lasted well over a decade with only one problem on the washer that I fixed.
The other person’s problem is they bought a combo unit. Few things that are nearly opposite purposes go well mixed together. Especially when entire critical components of one of them is entirely missing, like a lint filter…
I have heard Samsung is bad so often on the internet, but my personal experience is different. I’ve used a Samsung washing machine for almost 10 years now and it still works and looks like the day I bought it. It’s very easy to use, has a large front loader door, is quiet and power efficient (as far as that’s even possible with a washing machine). Never regretted it.
My brother also has a Samsung washer and dryer, because he loved how large the door was on my washing machine, so he bought one as well. It has served him fine for about 5 years now.
But hey, maybe I’m just lucky with the one I’ve got.
Before this one I had a Beko washer and dryer. I was unemployed at the time and didn’t have a lot of money, so I wanted a cheap model. The salesman in the store said it was bad (this was a long time ago, when they still had salesmen) and would break within a couple of years. But they did upsell an extended warranty for 5 years, which my mom paid for so I could afford to get the washer and dryer. Those units had served me very well for over 15 years. I did have to repair them a couple of times, but nothing major and some normal wear items. I sold those when I bought the Samsung as an upgrade. I switched to natural air drying instead of a dryer for environmental reasons, so I didn’t buy a new dryer.
Maytag has one good model too.
If that’s the one with the bottom agitator instead of the tower agitator that washer is assssssssssssssss
I had it and my clothes never came out clean. It was supposed to agitate them to roll but it just twisted everything into a knot. Clothes would come out with dry center bits, like water didn’t make it to them AND it took forever.
It is not, it has a tower agitator and works great.
Goood goood good.
I was lucky enough to get a speed queen washer dryer set on sale because it was a floor model. We’ve only had one issue with it, a water pump that was making a bunch of noise but was still functioning fine, they ended up swapping it out under warranty anyways.
