Mailbag: Washer and Dryer Recommendations

DAVE wrote:

YOUR SITE IS GREAT. I ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK LAUGHING. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK YOU OFFER GRASSHOPPERS LIKE US. IF YOU EVER GET THE CHANCE,
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE BEST WASHERS AND DRYERS TO BUY NOWADAYS.

ALL THE BEST TO YOU AND YOURS.

THANKS,
DAVE

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Mucho domos for the kudos. We aim to inform and entertain without regard to health-effects. But I’m glad you lived to tell about your encounter with Fixitnow.com.

Best washers and dryers? That’s easy:

Washers: the Staber washer.

Dryers: Whirlpool with the lint filter on the top panel (avoid the design with the lint filter in the door).

One other point: avoid Kenmore-brand appliances. As you may know, Kenmore doesn’t make anything but money. There ain’t no Kenmore factory in Malaysia, Pretoria or anywhere else. The Kenmore “factory” is a floor in the Sears Tower where corporate bureaucrats hobnob with manufacturers to get them to build crap with the Kenmore label. When you buy a Kenmore appliance, you don’t always know the identity of the real manufacturer. Further, you are buying an appliance without a manufacturer’s warranty and are totally dependent on Sears to provide warranty service. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of being bound up and bent over the jailhouse bunk, waiting for Sears to “service” me. Shalla gives us some inside scoop on Sears “service”:

shalla wrote:

Samurai-

I cannot emphasize enough how bad A&E Factory Service is. They are what was formerly called Whirlpool Factory Service. Now they are Sears, as Whirlpool sold their repair service to them. Whirlpool still makes good products, I firmly believe this. Problem is that even the best product needs service. This problem is compounded by the fact that customers are railroaded to A&E. When WFS changed to A&E, it was more than a name change. Sears refused to reward top Whirlpool techs, offering to cut some senior techs salary by 25%. Not surprisingly, most of them left immediately. Some stuck it out because of hollow promises from Sears about seniority as some had 30+ years with Whirlpool and didn’t want to start over. But they did, as their seniority was based on their A&E hiring. Most of these left as they became frustrated with the low caliber of new hires. Please pass the word-A&E bad!

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For a real-life story about the horrors of Sears warranty service, read this.

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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

CentrevilleVA August 9, 2005 at 4:54 pm: Dear SAmurai Master!

My experience with A & E has been terrible so far. They have skipped two appointments. Both the times they called me previous evening and asked me to be at home between 8 and 12noon. I waited till 1:30 PM, both weekdays adn no one even showed up. Meanwhile my whirlpool dishwasher has been broken for more than three weeks.

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