CR Washer Tests January 2007!

[vintagesearch]

To washoholic...

I agree with your last statement that CR should be more consistent, I really think again they proboably rate things more on maybe there opinions because the "real people"(us) use most or some of those products and dont agree usually. we bought a digital camera by nixon they rated "poor" and we NEVER had problems and our pictures look great however I cant say that for everything as most people here know that GE washers were always fiar on reliability and we found that out the hard way, after i subscribed and never bothered to look in the appliance section we could've slapped ourselves! (yeah we bought a GE washer and its gonna die soon) ;(

PS cool screename "washoholic" lol!

 

[lightedcontrols]

Regarding the Escalade!

For years, my car dealer had been trying to get me to buy an Escalade. When I got ready to move from Florida to Virginia, I finally decided that I would. It was the only vehicle (I drove the Hummer, Land Rover, Range Rover, the Mercedes, etc...) that had enough room for a doggy, kitty, kitty box, dog bed, boxes of stuff, and it could pull a trailer effortlessly! When I moved, I had lots of goodies that I would NOT trust the movers to move. We made numerous trips from Florida to Virginia and West Virginia pulling that trailer behind us. Several times on black ice, etc.... It performed and still performs perfectly. Love the Stabilitrac. I have had absolutely no problems with the vehicle except the time I got confused, and put it in reverse going DOWN a mountain while passing a coal truck. Of course, the nice people at Cadillac fixed it for me very quickly! I absolutely LOVE the vehicle! It has served me well. Remind me to tell you all the story of finding an RCA TV/RADIO/STEREO on the side of the road, and having a kid walking by help me load it into the back of the Rolls, and then wedging him in between the boot lid and the combo so it wouldn't fall out! Mark Lightedcontrols

 

[lightedcontrols]

PS

....the only drugs that I deal in are Aspirin, Geritol, & TylenolPM......and the pimp thing, I think involves sex or something of which I have no recent recollections.......L

 

[oxydolfan1]

LOL....

 

[golittlesport]

Throw away products

I think the reason CR recommended replacing an eight year old broken washing machine with a new one is the cost of labor today. Especially for most Americans who have agitator top loaders that cost under $400 to begin with. A repair today could likely cost hundreds of dollars. Given the much higher water/energy efficiency of today's machines, it would make sense.

 

[launderess]

Well my Miele (front loader) is over 8 years old, and so far so good! However, fully intend on keeping her running until Miele refuses to come out! They just do not build appliances the way they did 20 or even 10 years ago. Besides am not totally in favour of the "wet wipe" school of laundry, as current and future government energy restrictions seem to be producing.

 

[oxydolfan1]

That's why I'm considering the Haier.

If I'm going to have to throw it out anyway.....

Launderess, do you believe Miele's quality factor has increased substantially in the past ten years?

 

[lavamat_jon]

From what I've seen, Miele have done pretty well on keeping the quality up on their machines. The internal design more or less hasn't changed in the past 20 years - with slight tweaks such as larger drums on the current generation.

Jon

 

[rp2813]

I don't place much value in anything CR has to say anymore. I've stated before that they top-rated my junk Amana W/D pair back in 1997 when they were obviously rebranded Speed Queens, a brand that has never had a good repair record. Back in the 70's when Maytag washers were king and consistently (and correctly) top-rated in spite of their cost, CU factored in repair records as part of their rating and ranking. Seems to me that now they only consider peformance of a brand new machine and pay no attention to repair record. They may show a bar graph with repair info in a sidebar somewhere, but they don't seem to use that data when they do their ratings. I also don't know where they get their average life spans from. 31 years after purchase, my mom's BOL Coldspot side-by-side is still her main refrigerator. To hear CU tell it, that fridge should have been toast over 20 years ago. I let my subscription lapse last time I was prompted to renew.

 

[tolivac]

I don't agree with CU's idea of replacing washers and dryers that are 7 years old or whatever-WHY?esp if the machine is working well for its owner and he is happy with it.Sounds like they want you to contribute to the solid waste problem-why junk a perfectly good machine?makes no sense to me.Could see that say if the machine has died and would be costly to fix.I too take less heart in what CU says-lately they recommend the Electrolux "Oxygen" canisters and uprights as the best vacuum cleaners-don't they know these are the LEAST reliable vacuums on the market?And when they recommend LG products-On this website have read some postings of horror stories regarding their machines.If the service isn't present don't want their machine no matter how good it is.I used the vacuum cleaner as an example.They are currently recommnding some products that may not be very reliable or durable.Also don't like their ideas of MORE govt intrusion in consumer products.We have too much of that already.Who wants more?Not me!

 

[tomturbomatic]

John has one of the GE washers made in China. I took a load of towels down one afternoon to see how well it performed. After a very long wash, it did a drain and a flush, then spent the next 20 minutes, by the clock, trying to spin, stopping, restarting, rolling up and unrolling the towels. After 20 minutes of that, I stopped the machine, gave thanks for bringing a solid laundry basket with me and took the drippy load to my car. At home, I spun them and gave them a deep rinse in the 806 then finished them with a 1600 rpm spin in the W1918. They dried in 25 to 30 minutes in the giant GE with the big door.

So, I am sorry for saying that about the Chinese GE washer. After that point in the cycle where I picked up my toys and went home, I honestly do not know how it performs or what it does.

About the 7 year replacement advice: Some washers are used very hard and not taken care of at all. They must serve houses with 20 people living there. They show signs of oversize loads burning plastic tub shrouds during spin. Dried detergent caked everywhere, paint almost gone from the control panel, broken, unreadable or missing dials/knobs, signs of water and oil leakage, broken suspension parts, rust, some carbon-based life forms thriving in various sheltered places and there are the Norges that attack themselves and cannot be hauled away fast enough for the angry owner who feels ill-served by having a MAYTAG washer (or a washer with the MAYTAG name on it) go to pieces in such a short time. All of these are not on every machine, but representative of many. Then there are some very well cared for machines, some newer like deluxe pairs thrown out for maybe a new front loader pair; some older, but very well cared for like from a widow's estate where the new owners wanted something newer and larger.

But in many households there are often lots of people doing the laundry and not necessarily concerned with taking care of the washer. So maybe under these circumstances 7 years is long enough to let the machine suffer before it is recycled into a new washer. Years ago, some tourists were described as looking like a family on their third Maytag. That sort of sums up the treatment I'm describing.

 

[spinout]

Let's not forget that CR/CU is in the business of selling magazines, non-profit or not. I remember and prefered CR when they were more conservative and less advocates of blatant consumerism.

I, too, wish there was more consistency in their testing and ratings, especially over time. It would be nice if they would rate on a scale that included meaningful benchmarks. Is this thing really better than what I own, be it 5 years or 25 years old? In the tests cited in this thread, if they were to standardize the tests, e.g., were to add additional time to the lowest ranked washers (or shorten the wash time of the highest) and use equivalent concentrations of detergents (in ppm) then we would see very different results. In many cases, things seemed to be ranked just for the sake of ranking them.

That being said, they are, after all, CONSUMER reports. I think the bottom line is that people would rather buy a magazine the generally encourages them to buy new stuff than one that tells them to be content with the perfectly adequate appliances that they already own, or to shop used. This is just a reflection of the extreme consumerism that pervades this country.

Accordingly, I still find CR useful as a tool, but not as the final word on most items.

 

[tomturbomatic]

But when they rate things, it seems like they never look underneath to see how one is built better than another and which ones look like trouble waiting to happen.

They have to test appliances on the Normal cycle because that is the cycle that the government bean counters use to get the efficiency rating on the yellow and black tag. That is one way that they tests are standardized.

 

[exploder321]

I almost bought the Chineese GE's..

CU rates my affinty lower and i totaly disagree, esp. if you use the stain clean option or a warm/warm wash...

Plus using the correct HE soaps and such also helps

 

[neptunebob]

Spinout, I don't find Consumer Reports as useful as it used to be. Years ago, even 10 years ago the articles told a lot more about the products and the ratings had descriptions of the features. Also it used to be kind of "grouchy" for thrifty people with "Do you really Need this product?". But now it just seems like a magazine that wants you spend money on big SUVs, big screen 3000 dollar televisions (to show the same crap you get on TV today). They now test wine, may be nothing wrong with that but they would have never dreamed of testing in the past. Oh, wait, there is still some thrifty thought there, recently they said that an 800 dollar GE range cooked and roasted as well as 5000 dollar Viking. But mostly the magazine wants you to spend, spend, spend. Make me wonder if George Bush (Shop till you drop!) has anything to do with this.

 

[agiflow]

CU is definitely not what they used to be. I guess with only a few American companies left producing major appliances...the differences seem to be very small.

 

[rp2813]

Wine Testing

Bob, that CU wine testing is a joke and a great example of how they've strayed. It's wine tAsting after all, nobody's tastes are the same so that's just a load of crap from them.

I think what they've done is decide that a lot of their subscribers are buying more sophisticated products and so they are now reporting on those types of things. But it seems to me that they stopped looking at the bigger picture at least 10 years ago.

 

[tumbler]

CU

I take Consumer Reports with a large tablespoon of salt these days. According to them, the '91 Ford Aerostar I bought new was more or less a piece of junk; I sold it for $1400 when it had 348,000 miles on it (after rebuilding the transmission at 342k). Likewise, when I replaced it with a Chevy Astro van, C.U. dissed it; it's got 110,000 miles in 3 years with no problems at all. Back to washers; they gave good marks to the "Frigimore" machine I bought in '99. I also recommended it to both my brothers, my ex and a friend. Within 6 years, the tub bearings in four of them had burnt out. I replaced it with a Whirlpool Duet this past May, and I couldn't be happier. C.U. gave it the highest marks of all F.L machines-I hope they're right this time, so far they seem to be. If they gave the LG the top rating for '07, I guess they haven't tried to get parts for it, or from everything I've heard they would reconsider. These days, I'll check C.U. to see what they say, but then I will use forums like this to find out what peoples' real-life experiences are with a given product. That's what led me to buy the Duet pair, more than C.U.'s rating. I also called the parts places to price circuit boards-since they are the most likely part to need replacement in today's machines-and Whirlpool's came in as most reasonable, not to mention easily available. That's what settled the issue.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Not to stray from appliances, but CR always pushed the 6 cylinder engine in the Toyotas I have purchased with 4 cylinder engines and I have always had plenty of power and have not felt the roughness they said they found with the 4 cylinders. In a time when oil conservation should be a prime concern for all citizens on planet Earth, they are pushing larger engines in small cars which just is not responsible.

 

[oxydolfan1]

Yes, ditto with the 6-cylinder Hondas.