26 Jul, 2006
Why I will never buy a Maytag product ever again
Posted by andrea tomkins in: Misc. life
Update: December 31, 2006
I’m updating this post because I continue to get a lot of hits regarding the mold issues with the Maytag Neptune frontloaders. I can’t believe this problem was so wipespread.
I never heard back re: the letter I emailed to the Ottawa Citizen (below). We had to suck up the $300 repair and left it at that.
The repairman offered some sage points regarding the upkeep of front end washing machines. I’ve followed his advice religiously and I think it’s working.
1. Use two tablespoons of liquid detergent per load. Yes, you read that right. TWO TABLESPOONS. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? He said that we don’t need to use detergents marked “high efficiency” because it’s the same stuff but in a different concentration. So I measured two tablespoons into a shot glass (it didn’t quite fill it) and use the shot glass to measure the correct amount of detergent each time I wash.
Using more detergent doesn’t mean your clothes get any cleaner. In fact, the opposite happens. And in the case of frontloaders, the residue from the soap (mixed with, um, dead skin cells and other dirt) will form a mucky substance that will clog the drainage hole of the washer. Trust me. I’ve seen it.
2. Keep the door to your washer open when you’re not using it. This will allow for increased air circulation and will prevent that musty buildup.
3. Do a load of laundry in hot water every once in awhile. The hot water will help wash the yucky residue away.
4. Some people say to wipe the inside of the machine down after each use. I don’t bother, but it might be a good idea.
5. There is a way to remove the front panel and clean out of the holes where the water drains. There are instructions online if you want to do this yourself.
That’s it. Good luck with your Maytag. I for one will NEVER buy one again, and will continue to counsel everyone I know not to buy one either. As far as I’m concerned they manufactured a poor product and should have either (a) recalled it or (b) honoured requests to have the Neptune products fixed or replaced no matter how much time elapsed since the initial purchase.
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(this is a copy of a letter emailed to Tony Cote of the Ottawa Citizen)
Remember the image of the lonely Maytag repairman? How cleverly he’s been seared into our collective brains! He’s proof that marketing works. We bought a Maytag washing machine because we thought it was going to last us half a lifetime. We were wrong. And we are so disappointed that we are never buying a Maytag product again and counseling others to do the same.
The backstory:
About seven years ago we decided to replace our washer and dryer. It was an old pair? part of the deal when we moved into this house of ours. They were functional, but ancient and probably not energy efficient.
We knew we had to upgrade. There were going to be babies on the scene. Our shopping criteria was this:
– a quality product
– energy/water efficient
– large capacity
– gentle on clothes (I was tired of the pile of “handwashables” in the bottom of my closet. If I didn’t get a laundry machine with a handwash cycle I knew those clothes weren’t going to see the light of day again.)
We shopped it around and ended up at the Pinecrest Sears.
We were interested in the Maytag Neptune, which appeared to satisfy all of our desires in a washing machine. It came with a matching dryer as well.
I distinctly remember looking at the unit very carefully. We were newlyweds, without a lot of spare money. There was a woman looking at the same machine.
“I love Maytag,” she confessed. “I’ve had one for twenty years and I’ve never had a problem with it.”
I joked with her. “You’re planted here by the Maytag people right?”
Of course she wasn’t. But it solidified in my mind that Maytag was a great product.
The salesman approached and gave us the pitch. He also tried to sell the next model up from this one, the very top of the line. I asked him what the difference was. Nothing, he said, other than the fact that it had extra drainage holes. I asked if drainage was a problem with the model we were looking at. He said there wasn’t.
We bought the pair and it cost us over $2500.
It wasn?t long after we started using the washer that we noticed the clothes sometimes had a musty smell, and we started leaving the door open after washes to give the washer time to dry out. There was always a bit of standing water in the those drain holes near the door. But even with leaving the door open there was often a trace musty smell if the laundry wasn’t removed right away.
My husband Mark researched this problem on the Internet and found out there was a class-action lawsuit in the US. Maytag had designed a faulty product and a lot of other people were demanding Maytag do something about the problem.
Then a couple months ago the washer gave up the ability to spin the water out of the laundry.
It’s been an uphill battle ever since.
We took action to try to get this problem solved. First and foremost, Mark called Sears. Sears has refused to stand by the product they sold to us. We were told to call Maytag because it was their problem. Maytag told us to call a special number for the class action lawsuit. There was a website, but it was full of legalese that was really difficult to wade through. Surprisingly we read that if our washer was deemed unfixable they’d replace it with a top-loader, not a front-loader which was practically the whole point of our making the purchase in the first place.
Mark printed out the proper forms and sat down with them. According to the documentation, Maytag would fix the drainage problem, as well as the motor, but only if the motor had failed before February 2006.
We were honest and said that we’ve had the musty problem for years, but that the motor had failed after February. The drainage would be fixed. But because the circuit board had failed after February, the repair cost us $344. The sad part is that when my husband learned about the class action lawsuit in the United States (about a year ago) to see if we could fix the mold and mildew problems, he called Sears to ask about it. They told him that the class action suit did not apply to Canada. At that point we figured that if we wanted it fixed we would have pay for it ourselves. But we couldn’t afford it at that time.
It wasn’t until the machines stopped going into spin cycle we started researching the problem again and discovered that there was also a Canadian class action suit but unfortunately we were too late because our washer’s circuit board had failed after the February 2006 deadline. Class Action suit aside, we feel that Maytag should still recognize that they have built a faulty product and supply us with a new circuit board.
It’s taken weeks to get to this point. As a family of four it’s been distressing to be without in-house laundry facilities. (Thankfully my in-laws have been accommodating and have been letting do our laundry at their place.)
We are disappointed by all of this.
#1 – Sears. For selling us a lousy product, and not offering us any support or compensation.
#2 – Maytag. I expected that our washing machine was going to last a long time. Is it now naive to assume that if you’re going to spend the big bucks you’re going to get a quality product? I don’t want to buy things that are just going to end up in a landfill a few years later. It’s Maytag!
The image of that lonely Maytag repairman has been so firmly ground into our collective subconscious that we assumed we were getting a good product ? one that has been tested and checked and double checked before it’s released to the public, AND that they’d do the honourable thing and fix it if there was a problem. Don’t they have a responsibility to the consumer?
That $344 was a lot of money for us to spend, but we had no choice but to get it repaired.
I don’t know if there’s a resolution. And perhaps it’s too late. But we would appreciate any help or guidance you can offer at this point.
This is the website for the class action suit:
www.frontloadcanadasettlement.com
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Edited to add:
Here are some other sites that talk about the same problem.
and here
and here . There are so many I can’t even list them all.