This is an interesting thread, all the way through....
But I have a different perspective on much of what was said above.
First, any manufacturing that has human involvement is going to have flaws or errors occasionally. The degree to which that is a problem varies in regard to what is being made. A toothbrush with the colored handle being a bit off the standard green or yellow? No biggie. QC will usually catch this and scrap the off-color parts, but some will get shipped.
A rubbermaid or similar container that cracks or otherwise fails in service? Well, not great, but its not a major deal either.
A garment that has a hole in it upon first wearing - what a pain.
A flaw in a commercial airliner? Scary...
These all can happen, including, unfortunately, grease left in a new washer basket.
I have more than 20 years in manufacturing management. We all know that errors are going to happen, but its how the company responds to the problem that is often the most important issue.
I find it interesting to note that Alliance is ISO9001 certified. ISO is a certification among industry which essentially certifies, from an outside unbiased auditor, that the company has proper managerial controls to manufacture routinely high-quality product, that it has problem solving procedures in place that are effective, and that the company FOLLOWS those procedures when issues arise. All automotive and appliance manufacturers in the U.S. require most all their vendors to be ISO certified for these reasons.
Leaving grease in a washer basket, grease that apparently can ruin clothing, etc. is a violation of warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. This would be akin to making a car with temporarily square wheels. Washers are never supposed to make things dirtier, or ruin clothing, especially when new, even temporarily.
While I can easily see how an assembly worker could miss the step in properly de-greasing the stainless basket (there could have been a new packer on the line that day, or a temp in training, the polishing machine could have been using too much compound, or they could have even had a birthday celebration in the breakroom while the line was running...the reasons are almost endless), but this should be an item that warranted swift and effective measures by Alliance Management.
In a normal damage control situation, manufacturing management should first should have stopped any more machines from coming off the line this way. They then should have identified how many were involved by whatever caused this. They then should have pulled and inspected any stock still on-site such that no more were shipped this way, and they should have identified any units that were in-transit or off-site that might be suspect. Finally, the last two steps would be a plan for how to deal with consumers for those machines that got into the field, AND how to avoid this from recurring on the plant floor in the future.
It is a failure such as this that an ISO auditor would closely examine, especially in how the issue was addressed to prevent it from happening again.
My surprise in the information above is centered mostly in Alliance/Speed Queen's apparent response to the problem. A typical laundry load can be worth many hundreds of dollars. Sears said in one of their 1980s catalogs that a typical load was worth $150. This was nearly 30 years ago. To tell a customer that they need to run one or several washes empty to prepare a machine for use is not a proper answer in my opinion, especially when damage to laundry may have already occurred. Aren't these machines are expected to be factory tested and ready to use, out of the box?
A proper consumer response, IMHO, would have SQ bringing another machine out to the customer that they have checked for cleanliness, and take the other machine back. NO questions asked. I agree with the original poster that telling the customer that this is not a warranty issue is wrong and in very poor customer service, unless SQ doesn't consider their machines ready to use when delivered.
On the other hand, I don't think this is inexcuseable, as errors and accidents do happen. How we get over the occurance is the biggest issue. Should we be unhappy with a company that delivers $850 dirty appliances? Yes, I think so; we certainly should not buy into a diatribe about why we're being such complainers for expecting anything out of an $850 purchase. Is this grease a non-issue as some said, no, its not a non-issue, especially from the company that touts themselves as a leader in laundry --- "All we do is laundry" or something similar is SQ's slogan. Grease in a tub would be ok if the slogan was "All we do is laundry once you clean the preparative chemicals out of our tubs".
