Maytag to Be Purchased by Investors for $1.13 Billion

[repair-man]

Consumer Reports

Austin
I whole-heartedly agree with you, I'm no fan of Consumer Reports either. But, to say who cares what they think is wrong. They hold much power over the design of todays products. You can be sure that a negative comment in a CR issue will cause the manufacturer to address whatever it is that CR does not like. And I can personally attest as to why. A CR #1 rating is golden ! While in my 10 years as a Maytag dealer I never got to enjoy a #1 washer or dryer rating I saw a few ranges, refrigerators, and dishwashers get rated #1. And the customers flood in (with the copy of CR in hand) wanting the exact model. Not even something similar will do. It has to be exact. The instant Maytag would know about a #1 rating on one of their products they would develop a sales plan with new promo material for the particular product. They are not allowed to use the CR name so they would make big signs and stickers that would say "#1 rated by a leading consumer magazine". Then ther would be order restrictions put in place so that everybody in the dealer chain could get some until they could step up production. So I can only guess if a #1 rating is that good that a poor rating can be equally bad.

Ed

 

[mayken4now]

Oh My This

Is all too much, I am going to go spend my savings on any old Maytag's I can find. You all know how found I am of them.

Love,

Steve

 

[maytagbear]

Well, then, Laundress, dear,

Isn't about time that American manufacturers made demands of this "government" to institute a national health care and a national pension?

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[Designgeek]

The key to this one is whether the new owners want to go back to the good old formula of quality first, and earn their reward in the long term, or whether they want to strip down the company and make theirs by selling it back to Wall Street.

I saw something on That Home Site where someone quoted a press release about "global competitiveness" or some such buzzword that was interpreted to mean "moving manufacturing to China." This is not good but it's not surprising either.

Launderess, I think you hit it right on the mark. Other governments have pensions and health care, which benefit their companies though at the cost of higher income taxes. The result is lower-cost products on the global market.

Here we have none of the above, and our companies have to pay for those costs, which drives up prices, which drives away consumers, which forces manufacturing to shift overseas.

In the last election enough voters were persuaded to vote against their own basic interests on the basis of vague fears of "terrorists and gay marriages", and now look what we've got. Starting with a bankruptcy bill that's good news for usurious credit card companies and screws the average person. It ain't over yet, look who they're trying to install in the courts, even if they have to blow up the Senate to do it.

Any American here who sits out the 2006 elections deserves what we get.

We're the only industrial country in the world without national health care. Instead we pay private-sector bureaucrats who aren't even doctors, to prevent people from seeing their doctors! Is this insane or what? And now we're going to dismantle Social Security...? And look what just happened to United- no more pension, byebye!

As for junk bonds, GM and Ford just got their bonds rated as junk a week or two ago. This is *really* scary. General Motors and Ford. Holy cow...! What's going to happen to them...?

 

[gyrafoam]

Read an interesting article in the N.Y.Times last week. The jest of the article being the belief that if we could just get all the CEO's of the major U.S. Corporations together to use their business might, they would be able to sway the health care industry and do something to lower the costs.

In any event, it is interesting that a taxpaying American citizen CANNOT go to an emergency room at ANY hospital in this country and recieve FREE medical help but an illegal alien can. Bush (quietly) signed such a bill into law week before last.

Eventually we will get some coverage-----but at what price? I just recieved an e-mail from a friend today that deals with this topic. Our country out-sources all kinds of things from automobiles to clothing in the interest of "free trade"-----but HEAVEN FORBID if an elderly person trys to go to Canada for low priced drugs to stay alive with!

 

[gyrafoam]

Laundress-----

When I click on the link I only get a home page for Bloomberg. What do I click on from there to find the article on Maytag?

 

[launderess]

Original story/link has likely been archived/taken down, as it was several days old.

Try searching the news archives of "google" using keyword "Maytag".

Launderess

 

[alr2903]

it'll never be the same

On the price is right, up for bid," a beautiful w/d set from Maytag the dependability people in Newton Iowa"."Large capacity Maytag washer and matching Halo of heat dryer.