Well, like I said in the first post, it may not even matter what you pick since you can find lousy reviews for almost any appliance on the internet, much to my chagrin when trying to make decisions.
What I did learn, was that in terms of features and technology, it was not possible to find a single brand that had everything right across the whole model lineup. So we ended up with a mongrel mix of appliances, just trying to sniff out the best of each type for us. Some friends went with high end Wolf appliances for everything in their kitchen, and are now realizing that many of them are really not too hot. That is unfortunate, as they spent a lot of money on that stuff.
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I have come to the same conclusions, some of it, the hard way.
In our old city house we bought a Maytag dishwasher. It worked less than a week before the circuit board died. :shocked::confused3: Fixed under warranty but really. It should be still running but I doubt it.
When we built the country house we bought all Maytag kitchen appliances. The dishwasher died the first week. :confused3::shocked:
We bought from a local dealer who fixed it under warranty. We had many problems with the washer over the years, I fixed it some, another repair guy did some work but eventually, the electronics fried. I could see the short when I opened up the washer.
I don't think that dishwasher lasted 6-7 years and I would guess it broke on average every 12-16 months. POS to say the least and this was a top of he line model.
We bought a Bosch to replace the Maytag. So far so good. It is a higher end Bosch and what I noticed is that the engineers really paid attention to the details. Not only on the racks but for installation. The parts for installation were really well done and planned. MUCH better than the Maytag. Got our fingers crossed.
The Maytag fridge failed just short of five years. Thankfully, I noticed that the compressor was not running right so we got it fixed before complete failure. There were plenty of owners who had complete failures and waited many weeks to get a replacement compressor which is unreal in this day and age. Our dealer got ours fixed but it did take a week or so to get a new compressor. He said he would loan us a fridge if ours failed before the new compressor arrived. We got lucky in that I heard the problem before complete failure and we were just barely still under warranty. I think the new compressor was around $800 so it would have been cheaper to just buy a new fridge.
Knock Knock Knock. <Knocking on wood> The new compressor has been just fine but if it starts to go we will just buy a new fridge.
The Maytag range and microwave are working just fine. More knocking on wood....
HOWEVER, the stupid range is rusting! :shocked::confused3:
I am sure this is because of the bean counters. Some of the panels are designed so that the snap into place which is fine but the edge of the panel is UP and on the outside of the range.
This is perfect for catching and holding food, water, oil, etc that falls when cooking.
This was something easily avoided I just assume they did it this way to lower the cost of building the unit.
We now have a mixture of appliance colors in the kitchen.
We bought high end Whirlpool clothes washer and dryers while in the city and moved them to the country. The machines saved us a huge amount of money in our water bills and were worth the price. I knew when we were moving that we needed to resecure the washer drum but what I did not realize is that I could NOT do this but a service guy had to do it.
Course but the time I did realize this it was moving day and there was not time to get a service guy out so we just moved the washer. I don't know if this really hurt the washer because it worked fine for years before slowly falling apart.
And I do mean falling apart. We had a few parts fixed but eventually the repair guy handed us a list of parts that needed replacing and the parts were more than a new washer. :confused2:
We ran that washer for a few more years as it slowly broke apart. :shocked: The handle to the door broke so we used a screw driver to open the door. Various other pieces broke and then one day the latch failed and I had to pry open the door to get the wet clothes out. At this point, we had to buy a new washer. Since we knew this day would come we had been pricing washer for years so the wife went out looking at models. We did get lucky in that there was a sale, seems like there is always a sale and bought another Whirlpool from Lowes. Danged thing has more bells and whistles than we need but it is what it is....
The old dryer keeps on running but I did have to install a new heating element which was pretty easy to do.
What is funny, is that when I bought the city house, it had a cheap fridge that I guess was at least 10 years old. We replaced it with a new fridge and took the old one to my MILs where it still sits and runs in the garage...
Later,
Dan
