Is it over for Whirlpool ?

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Drum Roll Please...

Name a better duo other than Whirlpool and control boards, i'll wait.

I'm never going to forget how a few months back I commented on Whirlpool control boards being notorious for issues, after that a thread was created about their Whirlpool VMW top loader having control board issues. Go figure. It isn't a made up issue such has also been my case with Whirlpool appliances.

From day one of the VMW platform from Whirlpool, all I've seen is drive and computer issues, in fact it's relatively easy to find videos of Whirlpool VMW based washers on Youtube with people showing off the grinding sounds they make from the poor quality drives wearing out in a matter of just 3 years, though issues seem to range across the board from what i've seen. In the last few years however, it's become far more common to see videos of Whirlpools with these issues.

Below is just mearly ONE example. Issues cropped up in a matter of few months of ownership of the unit.




In just the last decade Whirlpool has rapidly declined in quality, assembly and programming. Even Samsung actually seems to have improved significantly compared to the last decade which is a crazy thing to think, but it's something to show how low Whirlpool has fallen. They just don't care anymore.

I always see a constant trend with people saying "bring back the direct drives." Here's there thing, if some type of miracle happens and they do come back, don't expect them to be anywhere near as well built as the initial ones. Expect the transmission to be on par with the build quality of VMW transmissions, expect a control board which fails after a few years, expect issues which all of a sudden exist now on the current models despite it not being an issue on prior models.

Heres how Whirlpool has fared for me from 2011 to now:

Old House:

- Kenmore badged Whirlpool french door (purchased 2011): Control board failure 3 years in.

- Kenmore badged Frigidaire stove (purchased 2013): No issues.

- Kenmore badged Samsung OTR (purchased 2013): No issues.

- Kenmore badged Whirlpool dishwasher (purchased 2014): Issues with door latch a little over a year.

- Whirlpool Duet (purchased 2014): Notorious spin cycle issue where it would not ramp up and keep returning to redistribution phase, issue close to 2 years in.

- Kenmore badged Samsung dryer (purchased 2015): No issues.

Current house: 2018 - present.

- Whirlpool range (purchased 2018): Issues out of the box with the computer board not registering certain functions as if those functions were never intended to be on that model. The next day those functions would work fine. Issues out of the box with assembly, panels were loosely assembled and would squeak and rattle when moved. 4 years in, the board failed and would not shut off the heating element during bake ($500 CAD). Got rid of it and bought a GE range. This was the final straw for Whirlpool.

- Whirlpool french door fridge (purchased 2018): Issues out of the box with loud rattling noises. A year in the ice bucket lid is stuck open and has been since.

- Maytag badged Whirlpool dishwasher (purchased 2018): No issues to date.

- LG front load washer and dryer (purchased 2018): No issues to date.

- GE range (purchased 2022): No issues to date. Feels significantly better built than the Whirlpool.

It's always Whirlpool...only one appliance didn't have an issue. They dug their own grave. It's nice to see that Ben's videos reflected this similarly.
 
That's just not how the world works anymore.

Without wanting to get to political:
Trumps logic for tarifs - directly or indirectly - was that the US imports many more goods than it exports.
He wanted to change that because in his mind the US should not import more than they export.
AKA "make things themselves".

Have you followed ANY news source this week and saw how that worked out?

Saying you have to make stuff yourself and being independent is so much better just is not true anymore.
Again: Your country is led by someone who tried to force exactly that and tanked the entire world economy in hours.

Most of the luxuries we have in modern life exist explicitly because countries do what they can best and let everything else be done by someone else who can do it better (be it cheaper, bigger, faster...).

Manufacturing jobs don't pay well anymore. Even if WP produced everything in the US, you'd end up with overpriced, middling appliances at best.
So sure, insist makeing it in your country is so much better even though this week of any in the past 5 years is probably the best example as of what happens when you don't understand why that just doesn't work anymore.

As an addendum (because someone will try to pull this argument):
No, you should never offshore EVERYTHING.
And you'll find that no country has offshored everything in one area (with very few exceptions).

It's just that many things - the more consumer item they get, the more actually - just don't make ANY sense to produce in countries where wages are what they are in the US or EU.

Things don't get offshored because a country can't do them.
Doing them just doesn't make financial sense anymore.
 
@washerdude - you're correct. Whirlpool still makes the 3360629 transmissions for Direct Drives. Techs still buy and replace them and due to horriffic manufacturing tolerances by Whirlpool, they're nearly unusable or may last 3-5 years if the consumer is lucky. You're far better off to rebuild an old one that buy a new one for $250 from Whirlpool, they are just that bad.

I've had interviews with engineers that are designing this stuff, or know the engineers that are, at Whirlpool and other companies. I would get smacked with a Cease & Desist and lawsuits if I aired those interviews because of how damning they are against modern design theory on appliances.

To put it bluntly, they do FEMA analysis to design the machine within a very specific tolerance of years that the machine will last. Its maybe 5 years for a washer, 10 for a fridge. But if its after the warranty period (which they have very exact numbers on), they really don't care. That's why you see so many issues with the machines at year 2 to 3 that they don't solve.

Recently, I had a discussion with a product manager at one of the big appliance manufacturers. Once we finished the powerpoint pitch deck on their products and how they should be used, I asked them, very specifically, why their boards were failing causing issues XYZ (this company is consistently out of boards across their product lines and techs have been badmouthing the failures for a year or two now). The product guy had absolutely no clue they were failing. None at all, despite how notorious the system is.

Its a systemic issue. They don't know and don't care unless it costs them in the short term via a recall. But when you repair or help people fix things, you don't deal in that side of things.

So we end up getting stuck with short lifespan appliances. The other side of the coin of truth is that consumers usually don't want to pay for a well-built appliance often, either. You aren't going to get a reliable machine build for $500 in most cases in the US between tariffs, American manufacturing costs, and so on. If you look at any old classic machine that we know and love - Maytag Dependable Care, GE Filter-Flo, Whirlpool Direct Drives, ect, they cost well over $1,000 in current inflation-adjusted money for some of the mid-grade models (much less $1,500 for a higher end one like, say, a Lady Kenmore in matte black). So customer perceptions and demands have to change too. If the companies start having product failures because consumers don't want crap or extra features, the corps would pivot. But... They aren't getting that feedback from consumers sadly. Unless your Speed Queen and are OK with a 1% market share and don't want to go for the killing blow against the other manufacturers.
 
Law of entropy I guess henene4. Things in an enclosed system breaking down. I still think we should have manufacturing here.

This country at one time did make good quality products. The problem is is that CEOs and shareholders want their money.

Have to meet the bottom line. Nobody seems to care about quality enough to where there is change. People want the cheapest price available so cuts have to be made somewhere I suppose.

There would be incentive to make our things here if we as people weren't so greedy which is one of many human faults. Unfortunately the age of Goodwill seems to be over.

By the way I don't have cable so the only news I can get is off my phone or the radio. I don't even watch TV.
 
I don't think it takes any college education to realise that if
a) importing everything is made HORRENDOUSLY expensive (tariffs)
and
b) you still need these things (I mean, yeah...)
the conclusion to still make things affordable and available is makeing them in your country.

What has been asked for in here is the same:
You want things to be made in country - and implicitly at an affordable price. It's further implied you'd still want to pay people in the US the same wages more or less (cause, I mean, if you want to have things made in the US and want to make that possible by paying people low wages - damn..).
So you'd have to make things not made in country less attractive.
And I think it should be obvious where that ends up.

There's really not much difference between those two things, only you go at it from different angles.

Anyway, I will do the same as I usually have to do with about 50% of posts here in Deluxe and just ignore any further responses.
It's really not good for me or the forum to engage further...
 
John, you make valid points on Whirlpool’s footprint, impact on community, technology and innovation.
But none of that matters in our financial infested world, in light of this press release:

“A Look at Whirlpool Corporation's Growth Numbers”
“Over the last three years, Whirlpool Corporation has shrunk its earnings per share by 26% per year. It saw its revenue drop 15% over the last year.
Overall this is not a very positive result for shareholders. And the impression is worse when you consider revenue is down year-on-year. So given this relatively weak performance, shareholders would probably not want to see high compensation for the CEO. Moving away from current form for a second, it could be important to check this free visual depiction of what analysts expect for the future .
Has Whirlpool Corporation Been A Good Investment?
With a total shareholder return of -44% over three years, Whirlpool Corporation shareholders would by and large be disappointed. Therefore, it might be upsetting for shareholders if the CEO were paid generously.”

Bosch lobbed a takeover balloon and then retracted.
Whirlpool has lost investors a lot of money.
Part of that is Covid, the markets outside of their control, Tariffs from Tump 1.0 and now 2.0.
But a lot is their own doing.
The constant “enshitification” of their parts and designs.
The fact that yes, LG Elux/Frigidaire, and shockingly even Samsung, have all marginally improved their designs and reliability (relatively speaking to contemporary times of endless garbage for sale). Whirlpool is languishing.
I’m not in the appliance industry but I’ve been in engineering in retail and industrial products for near 15yrs now (scary!) And there’s definitely some signs I’m seeing at WP from the outside that tell me their culture has radically changed the past decade. Ben’s comments reinforce what I feel I’ve been noticing.
The constant pressure to design things cheaper, faster, or not fully baked. Beta testing your software and electronics in the field. Distancing yourself from customers to the point WP engineering indeed doesn’t know they might have component or PCB issues.
That could be from a few things I’ve seen before. It’s not uncommon for management to not flow up issues from the field. Or the company (WP, service, or both) does not have an easy or efficient way to flow up field issues. Customer service in WP could be gatekeeping.
In engineering, it’s not uncommon for us to be purposely insulated from product/field issues unless they are direct safety concerns that open the company up to liability. Only then do they often become projects.
Product improvement projects are only kicked off if warranty costs will rise above re-engineering costs. Or we just wait till the next design platform.
Sometimes, engineers DO spec out quality designs or components, but sourcing, if they are pressured to cost cut, can skirt those specifications to an extent.
I feel like a lot this is likely happening at WP.
And it all has to do with the current leadership of the departments. Other competitors do this also, but their balance of these tactics might be skewed more to product quality than WP at the moment. Which I assume will win and retain more customers.
And that brings us to the customers. Yes, they are placated on cheap electronics and machines. Only now from inflation have appliance prices meaningfully gone up since the 80s. But part costs and quality have gone down. All while trying to keep more of that margin for the shareholders. It worked well up till now.
Either WP learns this lesson quickly, or their Board will make a move to right the ship. I don’t mean right the ship for us customers with good product, I mean for them the shareholders and their profits.
That could mean anything from ousting the CEO, to forcing the downsizing of brands and the company. Or even entertaining another buyout offer.
Remember, if a company or entity proposes a buyout to the Board, they are legally obligated to entertain it. Especially if it could give more $ to shareholders.
It’s like what happened to Twitter. They were court ordered to sell. Then Elon was court ordered to buy.
I hope they work this stuff out because the appliance landscape will be bleak if they don’t stick around.
 
Reply #29

We still manufacture plenty in the USA, and it's still growing. We also are the number 2 exporter in the world, second only to China. But we still export half as much as they do, with less that 1/4 the population. We were doing fine. Don't buy into all the nonsense.

U.S. Manufacturing Output 1997-2025 | MacroTrends

Manufacturing refers to industries belonging to ISIC divisions 15-37. Value added is the net output of a sector after adding up all outputs and subtracting intermediate inputs. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or depletion and degradation of...
www.macrotrends.net www.macrotrends.net
 
Right now in April 2025... if I had to buy all new appliances

Dishwasher it would be a Whirlpool or Bosch.. I think Whirlpool makes good dishwashers like the Maytag/Kitchenaid/Whirlpool models

A refrigerator... I honestly do NOT have a clue... I know definitely not LG or Samsung... Maybe the basic GE or Whirlpool or Frigidaire Top Freezer and just make and store my own ice with a countertop ice maker (not that I'm being cheap) I want an awesome refrigerator but they sketch me out more than any appliance. I keep hearing the LESS complicated a refrigerator the better.. (which might be true because I rarely have problems with those little mini fridges... and those are the least complicated of all.)

An all electric Range? I have no clue here either. I guess Whirlpool/Frigidaire glass top range

Front load washer LG or Electrolux (although I don't like Elux doesn't have a drain pump access)

Dryer (definitely Whirlpool standard dryer)

so you see, with appliances, I'm all over the place...

This is just based on videos I've watched over the past couple of years.

It's so weird to me that you can not trust any company to make all of their appliances good... just certain ones. But whatever...

In some ways it almost feels like they're all the SAME to me at this point. Like one giant conglomeration making appliances.
 
Reply #26

If I had to do all new appliances today it would all be Whirlpool.

Even though the GE top load agitator washers have that huge capacity and a true dual action agitator.

I don't like the feel of the controls. They are rather loose and the smaller dials turn all the way around.

Even the Maytag controls feel more clicky and sturdy and that's not saying much, plus they still have that useless pole wash plate they REFUSE to redesign.

Here we are 7 years into the TR design and Speed Queen doesn't look like it's going to let go of it.

I think the thing though is that most people just throw the load in and add their chemicals and come back when the machine is done. They're not actually sitting there through cycles watching what it's doing.
 

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