2d ago

Built to last

229 comments

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.

Bet someone chimes in with "but the new one is better because it uses less energy". I'm too lazy to figure the math on that but I can't imagine that the 20% more energy usage of my old machine is greater than the energy cost of manufacturing, shipping, extra repairs (parts, transportation) that the new "better" machines need on 1yr to 18month cycle of fixing or outright replacing.

What are people doing with their laundry equipment and other appliances? I'm not saying you'll get 30 years out of new appliances, but I still routinely get 10ish.
- Luck of the draw.
  We're suffering from design issues. People want refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom and washers that open in the front.
  Then companies want to make you connect to the internet so they can put an app on your cell phone and sell your data to every bidder.
  Then, adding insult to injury unless you buy the top of the line they skimp. (And even then sometimes, looking at you Samsung refrigerators) That mid-range dishwasher no longer has a mascerator in the sump and the walls and the swing arms are all made out of plastic with no bearings. They're not putting good seals and isolation around the logic boards.
  You can buy good long-lasting stuff if you're careful. But man are you going to pay.
  When people look at a $3000 - $4,000 laundry set vs a $1200 set They start to ponder if it washes clothes does it matter.

My wife hates our "ugly" fridge that came with our house. It's about 25 years old works perfectly, even the ice maker. She is a frugal person that can't justify replacing it until it breaks. Yet it keeps on ticking. Everyone I know who has a fridge made in the last 10 years has a broken ice maker. I'm happy with the "ugly" perfectly functional fridge.
- If the only issue is the looks, could you not do something like a vinyl wrap or just plaster it with art?

"Our parents" ... ?
👀
- Hey step brother.... ;)

My washer I bought in 2015 for a condo worked all the way to when we sold in 2024. Likely still going because it never had an issue.
New house washer purchased last year, still no issues.
My inlaws have gone through several in the last 10 years.
Biggest difference is user error. My inlaws wash a big load of towels every single day and load the washer to the lid. I load 3/4 full and don't go through towels like crazy.
People just don't know how to use appliances.
- 99/100 times user error is the answer to most stuff. Users are idiots who will not accept responsibility as long as they can say "well it's the appliance that is built bad".

Is it really that it worked for 30 years or just that the couple times it failed that actually got somebody to repair it?
I had my washer/dryer for 8+ years now. Actually got the extended warranty for sure reason and it covered having a repair when it started leaking, but given the cost of repairs hasn't just elect to buy a new unit.
- My washer/dryer unit stopped working properly after less than 5 years. Out of warranty. I was damned if I was going to toss it or pay the equivalent to fix. So, I researched, found the problem, purchased the part and fixed it myself. I'm a 58 yo woman who is so sick and tired of the games corporations play to part us with our money.

Buy Electrolux or V-Zug.
- Love my lux

Wow, a sample size of 2. Very scientific
- the wording makes it 3 (hopefully)

I went back to my birth country and my grandmas toilet is ancient, like 100 years old and the insides are original, never replaced and they work. Meanwhile im in Canada and I’ve had to replace the mechanisms inside the water tank like twice in 3 years

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.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Boots theory
- 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.
  
  It will also use much more energy and water, because they're built to wash extremely quickly, efficiency be damned.
  
  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?
  
  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°.

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.

If it's a side-loading washer, you're not supposed to close the door all the way when it isn't in use. That's why it smelled.
- Mine (Miele) actually says to close the door completely to reduce the possibility of small children or pets entering. We ignore that bit though.
  
  Mine says not to close it to avoid mold and shit
- Pretty sure this is true for all modern washers, ours is top load and it says leave door open when not in use.
- That's dumb design.
  
  Show us your non-dumb way to keep the water in without making the door watertight, then.
  
  It's annoying, but it's a trade-off for front-loaders being better at cleaning.

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 very nice of you, looking up the numbers stating exactly what i said. thanks.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory applies...
  A Speed Queen set sure would be nice to have.
- 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.

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.
- 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?
- 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

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.
- Wifi is there to avoid pressing the capacitive buttons.
- "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.

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.
- 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.
- This was unironically Maytag, they enshitified with the rest. The Maytag man was a real thing.
- 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

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 :)
  
  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.

Why are appliances shit nowadays >:( i bought a house with 20-30 year old appliances that work fine, but decided to start upgrading so I bought a new washer and dryer. The new machines dont work nearly as well and I know they're not going to last even 10 years. We're already having issues with them 4 months later.
- Partly it's survivorship bias.
  20 years back my family got a new house.
  The wisdom then was same as now, they don't build em like they used to. Within 5 years the stove stopped working and a year later the air conditioning went out. However the rest of the original stuff is still going and the replacements have lasted fine too and now are the prime examples of what people will point to to say things lasted longer back then.
- they are often "cheaper" then what you would have paid in the 80s and they are built to that price
  they are more efficient, which means every thing has tighter tolerances and thus more likely to break
  they are more complicated due to the above which means more to break
  with the above efficiently they use way less water but in my experience that means they clean worse
  
  And also planned obsolescence

Should’a bought a Speed Queen

At least it's Wi-Fi connected.
- I need my FBI guy to know that I have clean clothes for work in the morning.

I've repaired a few dryers, the new ones have the same aluminium drum like you would expect but for some godforsaken reason they're allowed to mount that drum in place on a plastic ring. The dial components and thermostats used to safely operate the heating elements are also much smaller, which is problematic given that gives them less capacitance for high voltage and heat causing them to fail easier.
But worst of all is that when they fail, not if but when, you can't just take the dial off and file the corrosion off the metal contacts, you have to order an entirely new board completely if they offer it at all. You can't just open the top and front panel with a few screws to take the drum out and do repairs, you have to unscrew every panel in order and detatch them from the additional internal chassis, and you're gonna need like 7 fucking arms to put the damn thing back together.
If I were in charge, these sort of blatant obsolences would be punishable with extradition and federal prison.

Spend a little more and get yourself a speed queen top loader and never replace it again.
But also … my Maytag (same brand as my parents that came with the house that was built in 82) high efficiency front loader has been reliable af too.
Just don’t get a washer from a brand that is just a tech brand that now makes washers.
- Everyone always talks about speed queens and I always have to chime in. The cost isn't worth it. As shitty and consumerist as it sounds, it has been far cheaper to replace every few years than buy a speed queen. For one SQ washer I could buy 3 of my Samsung washers, and for one SQ dryer I could buy 4 of my Samsung ones. I got both my washer and dryer used. The washer was bad within the first year and replaced with a near new referb and it has been good for 5 years. The dryer is still working After the 6 years I have had it. They cost me a fraction of the SQ price even with the extra washer purchase and still work. Even if they both broke every other year and got replaced, my 10 year cost is still less than buying a SQ. The price just isn't worth it.
  
  I guess you assign no value to the waste of using 3 to 4 times the number of machines

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.
  
  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.
  
  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?

I'm so thankful my house came with a super old washer and dryer. They work so well. I had to replace the one vent hose thing for the dryer, but that's because my cat thought she could sit on it and it ripped out of the wall when she landed on it.
- I'm not saying it is the case in your situation but sometimes very old appliances are so inefficient that it makes sense to replace them on energy savings alone, we had a fridge that I put a meter on to see what it cost us to run, it was a little over $100 more per year then the larger one I was thinking of buying So if this new one lasts 10 years or so it will have paid for itself.

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.
  
  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.)
- 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).
  
  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.
  
  (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...

Requires wifi. Sends gigs of data back to the manufacturer everyday. But it has pretty chime.

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.
  
  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.
  
  It's such an unfortunate name. They really need to rebrand.
- Candy
  Haier bought it in 2018
- My Bosch washing machine is eight years old and works fine.
- My Euromaid is a decade old. Had to replace a $30 part after 5 years, but no other issues.

If your clothing washer stinks, run it on hot with just bleach inside it, like put in a bit too much bleach, no clothing
- Yeah being new home owners we didn't know you had to clean them. Just like a bachelor guy saying "why do I need to clean the shower it gamers soapy every day!"
  Got us a couple of those tablets and it cleared right up
  
  I don't know what it is, but those cleaning tablets will cause my machine to suds up so much that bubbles/water start pouring out of the exhaust and all over my floor. One of the first times it happened, all of the bubbles were screwing up a sensor and I couldn't get the machine to work for a week. I thought it was broken, and was just about to buy a new one when I got the idea to try sucking everything dry with a shop vac.

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.
  https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2025/03/01/do_household_appliances_really_not_last_as_long_as_they_used_to_1093575.html
  The average lifespan of a washer has declined a little but the frequency of use during that lifespan has increased measurably.
  
  The appliances from 30 years ago that fell apart early aren’t here to tell their tale.

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.
  
  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.
- 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.

My apartment is furnished with slightly older appliances for laundry. They rattle the floors. I know when the downstairs neighbor is doing laundry etc. They are so ugly and yet so reliable.

I just had to get the fridge-freezer in my apartment replaced because the freezer started growing ice everywhere like that was its job, nothing I did helped. When the landlord came to take a look he was surprised by how old the one I had was, he looked it up and it's been here since 1993. I've lived here since 2016, and it worked perfectly until a couple of months ago. While the new fridge-freezer combo (one of those that's half fridge, half freezer on top of each other, same as the old one) is much better in many ways, it's obvious it won't survive for even 1/3rd of the time that the old one did. The one thing that annoys me is that my fridge magnets can't hold themselves up on the new doors because the metal is too thin, they just slide down to the bottom edges.

For front loaders you should leave the door cracked at least. Also clean under that rubber seal once in a while...
- this, plus what's important to not to use too much detergent and not just use them on 40°C the whole time, because thats a really good temperature for an incubator. Give them a 95°C load once in a while, that kills off whatever is trying to smell in there.

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!

My apartment expects me to pay to use their machines, but they don't fucking clean them. Most of the time, my clothes come out looking and smelling worse than when they went in!

I had to buy 4 little plastic things for $15 every few years to keep my 25yo machine working. Last time I got like 50 of them for $25. I can keep her running for the rest of my life.

We have a Miele we bought 13 years ago and which has far outlived the projected amount of washing cycles. I had to replace the water splitter, but apart from that it's still running fine. I heard that more recent Miele machines don't last as long, though.
- Lol sadly. The long life is a loss business. People only buy a new one as soon as the old one is scrap. Once the market is served, the problem of longevity arises and therefore no revenue. That's why a lot of money has been invested in predetermined breaking points, which are usually designed for shortly after the warranty. (A lot of money, because it has to be achieved by material weakness or something else that cannot be proven. ) This means that there are always customers and therefore revenue. It's stupid but unfortunately it has to be that way. In many other areas too.
  
  I'm not sure Miele is struggling that much, was a few years ago now but I remember a sales rep telling me the story of the annoyed German executive who "was unhappy" with a division of Miele as they had run out of room and had to "off shore" a factory to keep up with demand. The new factory was in Austria.
  I am a huge advocate for them, back when I sold white goods and small appliances they often had really solid products and they maintained their "prestige brand" status by testing their products to an extent I haven't seen many other brands bragging about.
  Usually we sold to new customers on word of mouth from existing, and existing customers who wanted to scale up or down as family requirements changed.
- Got a "entry point" Miele about 9 years ago. Same experience as you. If they have started compromising on quality I don't know where to go.. Asko is now Gorenje and produced in China, and have not pulled out of Russia.
  
  Electrolux, V-Zug

This has literally been me over the last 3 years. Started making decent money so figured we would replace our old faithful washer and dryer, mostly due to growing family and needing bigger capacity. Fuck Samsung. Washer shit out 2 months outside warranty, and would have cost the price of the washer to fix it. The 'auto balancing system' is fucking bullshit. I don't care if my washer bounces around because the load is unbalanced. My parents' washer could be as unbalanced as shit and didn't matter because the whole bin had supports to the frame of the washer. Was it loud if it was an unbalanced load? Fuck yeah. But you could simply rebalance yourself, and continue if you really wanted to. Not necessary though. It would finish washing if it had power, and no force could stop it.

I believe this because I had an old microwave from the 80s not a single issue, bought a new one the light went after a few weeks lol
- The problem with microwaves is the ones from the '80s were far less powerful than new ones

Your appliances and devices will all be enshittified and you will be happy.
- I receive them with joy.

I personally used the same washing machine from the time I was 13 until I was 36.
Been through some dryers though, and the old washer gave out a few years ago. I probably could have repaired it but I couldn’t find the time.

Don't forget the wifi not connecting or staying connected, keeping it from getting updates for reasons mortals aren't supposed to know.
- Why should a washing machine need updates to begin with?
  
  So that manufacturers can patch up remote exploits, duh!
  
  Always online model of laundry DRM. When the servers shut down then the washing machine stops working.
  Also, washing machines tend to eat up one sock. Now there's going to be a micro transaction to get the sock back.
  
  !internetofshit@suppo.fi
- I remember a guy actually monitoring how much data his washing machine used and it was like 6 gigs a month. Is it mining bit coin???
- Why in God's name would you connect it to WiFi?
  
  It can tell you it's done, so you notice the notification after a couple hours instead of finding musky clothes a day or two later
  It can tell you it's time to do the self-cleaning cycle
  If you're doing something unusual, like washing reusable diapers which need extra rinse cycles, you can upload a custom program for that to the washer
  Even more unusual, someone had stacked units and was too short to reach the buttons on the washer, so they liked to start it via the app instead of getting a stool
  Most of this can be achieved in other ways (like a smart plug measuring the current draw and a simple monthly reminder), but non-techies want turnkey solutions.
  I can't see any reason to have WiFi on your dryer, though.
- I bought a new washing machine last year that has no WiFi, if you don't want to you don't have to buy shit like that
- And it has to be the horrible, congested and overused 2.4 GHz band.
  
  They would need to double the costs to accommodate both 2.4GHz and 5Ghz bands if they choose the latter for backwards compatibility with electronics.

I hate that my washing machine has electronic buttons rather than mechanical rotating interrupters.

I have a ten year old Samsung washer. It started leaking badly a couple years ago. I opened it up and replaced one small rubber tube for $5. If I had to pay someone $500 to fix it, I'd have been better off buying a whole new appliance. I won't be surprised if this is the only repair I have to do for many more years.
I suspect this is actually what's changed - labor is so expensive compared to the cost of the machine that people replace their appliance with a new one because it's only a little more than fixing their old one. And when they replace, they tend to think of the old brand as bad, and look for a new brand.
So everyone has negative stories about their appliances across just about every brand, except Speed Queen because those are so expensive, you'll actually pay a repair person to fix it instead of replacing it. It's like how some sports car brands are notoriously high maintenance, but what Ferrari owner cares about maintenance costs?
Decades ago the relative cost of a washer or dryer was much higher compared to repair labor. You'd pay the Maytag man to come fix your dryer if it had a problem.
- I suspect this is actually what's changed - labor is so expensive compared to the cost of the machine that people replace their appliance with a new one because it's only a little more than fixing their old one.
  The guy on an assembly line who places a particular assembly in place and connects the tubes/bolts can perform that task on hundreds of machines in a day. The guy who has to drive to each person's house to replace the exact same part can do maybe 2 a day, assuming he has the right part on hand, and assuming that it's easy to diagnose which part has failed.
  
  Sure, but I don't think the price balance was historically close to today. Appliances may have been, relatively speaking, a much bigger investment to the point where paying a repair technician for a service call was usually the better option. Today, not so much.

Winning!!!!!

Front loaders suck for moisture retention. They need more care between cycles to prevent build up.
- They can. The newer ones have mandatory 'drum clean' cycle every 20 washes or so that runs hot with no detergent and helps to kill and blast out any potential accumulating grime/mould.
  So far so good with ours (midrange Samsung front loader). Not expecting it to match the record of of last one, which was an LG and ran for 20 years, but so far it's been great.

This is a myth

Please upvote this comment so it gets visibility. I just want people to hear this.
European brands in America are not good. They are few and far between and are very difficult to repairs when and if they break.
There are a few exceptions like Bosch dishwashers which are very prevalent in America. Don't get the others recommended in this comments thread. At the very least in America they're hard to repair hard to get parts for and are extremely expensive you are much better off sticking with American brands.
What you want to avoid is whirlpool and Samsung. Everything else is fine hands down Whirlpool makes the worst appliances they are truly terrible and should not be purchased under any circumstance. Samsung makes the worst refrigerator worse than even whirlpool. The other appliances to Samsung makes are very mediocre although I will admit their washers and dryers are not bad.
In my opinion LG makes the best appliances in America right now because I service very very little of them. If I do up the service them it can be a little difficult to find parts for them but I still recommend them me
GE is very middle of the road and generally a good option for anything that you want to get they make appliances that are absolutely not the worst but also not necessarily the best.
Stick with the major brands don't get one off European brands here in America they're not worth it.

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