Our year-and-a-half old clothes washer has become incontinent. The vendor we bought from turns out not to do service and Speed Queen doesn’t have anyone doing service in our area. Isn’t that just a delight? Speed Queen does have a firefighting team for these sorts of problems (which would indicate we aren’t first) and are trying to find a solution. As Yoda said, “there is no try, only do.” We’ll see.
In the meantime, I did three loads of laundry hovering over the washer with a wet vac (hoovering for our UK friends) to keep up. Not a happy day.
I posted an update on the wine cooler on the extra basement or garage fridge thread. Forgot which thread I was on, silly me. Yes, replacement as we feared. Got a different brand, and yes, an extended warranty. Glad to have it back, very convenient.
Yow, that is no fun. I am sorry that you are going through this with your washer. Lack of service is my major beef with appliances. There’s something very broken—besides the appliance—when vendors sell appliances without a clue as to how they’ll be serviced when they break.
Thank goodness you are resourceful though you shouldn’t have to call on your inner MacGyver just to do the wash. Hope your washer gets fixed quickly.
Funny, I bought my current house about 10 years ago. Appliances weren’t original (house built 1968), but they were probably circa 1980s. The icemaker went and the repairman–I had to call at least 3 places to find one–came out, fixed it and told me to hold on to it. He had customers with refrigerators from the 50s that were still humming.
Around the same time (1980s), mom and dad gave their old almond-colored fridge to my cousin for his basement kegerator. He jokingly complained in 2010 that it died.
Sis and BIL redid their kitchen less than 10 years ago. Spent a good amount of dollars on a high-end fridge. Then spent another amount for another new one. BIL now tries to buy my lowly fridge every time he visits . . . but seriously asks me to keep an eye out for old refrigerators and send them his way.
Oh, good plan. Research and analysis to the rescue!
I can share a similar-ish story. Earlier this summer, the power of self-diagnosis helped us get our failed washer up and running within a week. It’s an old Fisher and Paykel model no longer sold in the US. How old? Let‘s just say that in human years, the washer would be ready for its sophomore year in college.
My husband and I were able to narrow down the issue, and I called our appliance store for help. They tracked down the (scarce) part we needed from a distributor and scheduled a technician. Shipping took a few days. Repair took less than 15 minutes and we were back in business.
Too much technology for its own sake. I don’t need a touch screen, Internet of Things, or any of a myriad of other gee whiz “capabilities” in a fridge. I want it to stay cold. Extra credit for the light coming on when I open the door. It is amazing how simple HVAC-R is before you load it up with extras.
Just replaced my parents’ 25 year old Kenmore refrigerator with a similar Whirlpool model. I was surprised to see it’s pretty much the exact same design. You would think in 25 years, someone would improve the reliability instead of the other way around.
Buy the warranty. Before I retired from Best Buy employees got crazy good prices.
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I still buy them at regular price because they will be used. My Whirlpool washer and Sony tv both had in home service twice.
The tv dropped dead just out of warranty so I bought a Samsung which I am no fan of. The washer is acting flaky again, just out of extended warranty of course.
Although it peeves me mightily, I agree with this 100%. Had a hard time coming to this conclusion, as I see it as rewarding companies for making poor products. Unfortunately, it is just the way it is now.
Ever wonder where your old appliances go? Off on a barge to another country, stripped for parts, with the used parts going into NEW products. It seems very wrong, but at least they’re not winding up in landfills entirely.
A repair person told me this when we had a less than 4 year old appliance in the shop to see if it could be repaired. It could not, so we replaced with a different make, and bought the extended warranty.
SO, my 18 month old stainless steel French door/freezer down below Samsung refrigerator that went kaput three weeks before my 22 month old Samsung stove went kaput are now on a barge so the parts can be put into new Samsung appliances. That just made my day.
We’ve never taken out an extended warranty because we’ve always had good luck until Samsung came into our lives. No one in this area works on Samsung’s so instead of paying for a $300 service call so someone could tell us we should buy a new one we just bought Frigidaire with fewer bells and whistles from a local dealer instead of Lowe’s. And Home Depot has been pushing Samsung big time on their commercials lately. I don’t recommend Samsung major kitchen appliances at all.
@Miss_belle - so sorry for your double bad experiences! I’ve heard bad things about Samsung appliances, anecdotally for awhile now. I guess they should stick to TV’s if they’re still any good.
I think you made a good choice by going through a local dealer, that way, their technicians will come out for you, if you need them.
We only have extended warranties on our DW, and wine fridge, so I hope all the others don’t go out within months of each other. So far, they’re holding up well, thankfully.
The Best Buy extended warranty includes in home service. Part of my duties when I worked there included shipping and receiving broken tvs and appliances.
Samsung was number one but we sold more of them.
I wouldn’t touch a TCL or Hisense tv. They were auto return boomerangs.
GE dishwasher slowly dying at 4+ years old tho even from new the dishes needed to be pretty clean going in to be slightly effective. The electronic display panel has been out for a year but if I press start it runs a cycle (which cycle I have no idea). Fridge at 4 yrs old makes odd groaning noises occasionally (same brand:). When we bought the fridge there were very few choices available without the thru door drinking fountain- which I hated.
That reminded me of a special feature of the 1936 fridge. There were two functions: the inside was for keeping things cold, the outside was for not keeping things cold.
The oven igniter in our Samsung range just went bad. We purchased the extended warranty to get 4 years of coverage. We were just told, sorry, warranty expired in October. It’s not too difficult to fix, but still.
We have a Speed Queen clothes washer in warranty. When the lid lock failed we discovered that warranty service is not available in our zip code. Fortunately Speed Queen stepped up and is paying someone to come in from about 40 miles away. This is costing them a fortune. We’ve had over 10 visits so far. I asked if the (stupid) lock could just be bypassed and it is too integrated with the rest of the control system. sigh I don’t need a lid lock on a top-load washer.
On the latest visit the connection to the lid lock failed and now we are waiting for a new wiring harness (week two of a four week parts estimate). We found if you put just the right pressure at just the right angle on the connector the washer will work. A plastic wire-tie and a bunch of tape later the washer at least works while we wait for the new harness. The repairman was sufficiently impressed that he took pictures of the temporary solution and texted them to his buddies.
