Robert: I'm sorry to hear all of this is happening to you. Here's hoping it gets better soon.
All: I would love all of us to take a look around and watch what we are doing.
We are much more knowledgeable than most average users.
Just take a look around threads here -- there are *plenty* of threads about machines dumping the contents of the outer drum on the floor (right now there's a current thread about a top loading FilterFlo) and there are people all the time asking for help with pumps that broke and/or got jammed by socks, underwear, underwires etc. Notice I did not specify which kind of washers, because it happens to both top loading and front loading washers. If we look dispassionately at it, it happens "more" to toploaders than to frontloaders simply because (a) as a rule, most washers in USA do not have an easily accessible pump clean-out port like Euro machines and (b) because so far, the percentage of frontloaders installed base is dwarfed by the installed base of toploaders, although frontloaders seem to be slowly gaining ground in US.
Either way, take a look at this thread, and the number of things like "frontloaders are more complex" etc that even people who are technicians and should know better are saying is discouraging.
Frontloaders, particularly nowadays, are basically motor, belt(s) and pulleys (and that's if they don't have just a direct-drive stepping motor). If we forget for a second the Fisher&Paykel-based designs that also have a direct-drive motor toploader, the vast majority of toploaders have much more complicated transmissions and suspensions than the frontloaders. We are just *much* more familiar with toploaders, and a transmission appears as a "simple" blob of metal hiding many gears and complicated stuff inside that needs lubrication (and often fails/dumps oil all over the floor and/or the clothes to be cleaned).
"Electronics" is not an excuse. Sure, they've made a bunch of things more more easily accessible to frontloaders, but they are doing the same job for most of the toploaders for sale currently. Even machines that have a round knob often just have that as a selector and the actual timer is a computer board hidden somewhere.
As for "good ol' times" reliability, LOL, I betcha you don't want that. Most of those machines used to fail more often than the newer ones. Don't take me wrong, I love the old stuff and they are interesting in all kinds of ways *including* what engineers came up with to avoid being sued by patent holders of competing machines, but those mechanical timers are more failure-prone than the computers we now have.
I have a washer and dryer set here that is almost 14 years old, gets used a lot and has not failed yet, despite the heavy use. Don't take me wrong, the *first* time it fails (either washer or dryer) I will *toss* it on the curb. I've been waiting for the darned things to break practically since day one because the manufacturer (which shall remain undisclosed if you don't know us) was one of the "big" ones in America that, instead of investing in R&D and staying ahead of the competition (Europe), chose to badmouth frontloaders with all kinds of things like "leak prone", "too complicated" etc and then, when they found themselves cornered they released crap for nearly a decade. Mine is the second or third "iteration" and, despite that, is jam-packed with bugs, both mechanical and in software, and most of them were to shave off a buck or two in the design/manufacturing. Which leads me to distrust the manufacturer now, but I doubt they care. The *only* reason I have not replaced the set yet is because the vast majority of the newer stuff has dumbed down temps and it's hard to know which manufacturer/model has decent temps like a 140F hot wash.
Don't kid yourself. No matter *which* washer/dryer you have, American, Asian or Euro, or if it's "traditional" or HE, or if it's top loading or front loading, you are at the mercy of seals that can fail and flood your laundry area and small items ending up at the pump. Careful loading can help avoid some of the problem but you are not guaranteed to avoid it completely.
A severely underloaded or overloaded horizontal axis washer can push small stuff like baby socks thru the boot and into the outer tub. It's harder to have it happen in toploaders, but sometimes small items get pushed between the top of the basket and the outer tub thus ending up in the pump -- that often happens when people are not paying attention loading/unloading or the machine is severely overloaded.
Another thing I'd like to put out there is that quality is way harder to define than you think. An awful lot of Euro frontloaders look flimsy but are better engineered where it counts, including electronic boards, but also the door shuts firmly and securely, while you often see American and Asian machines with flimsy doors and fronts that flex when the machine is working, thus making it easier to land socks in the pump area.
If SpeedQueen makes a frontloader that *looks* massive and overbuilt but lets the door flex, it will cause trouble despite the price and appearance. I have not *used* one of their newer machines in ages -- the last time I used one was over 10 years ago (possibly more) when they just introduced them to laundromats and they were not sold to consumers back then. I was not impressed. Unless they changed the machines *a lot*, I would not spend the money on one.
As for the toploaders, sorry, I have bad news too. I used to have an Amana toploader in the early 90's. I got rid of the set (washer and dryer) *before* the warranty wore out so I had no trouble getting buyers to take the set off my hand. That set did not perform well and did not seem like it would last.
Why should you care? Because if you look on the web in general or even search for threads here, there are *plenty* of complaints about those machines, and they seem to still be exactly the same machines that SpeedQueen is now selling. SpeedQueen and Amana used to belong to Raytheon back then. Unless the newer SpeedQueens from 5 years ago or so have been extensively redesigned, particularly the seals, I wouldn't invest in one either.
Remember, what laundromats (or commercial laundries in any case) are looking for is not the same a regular consumer that has only *one* washer+dryer set are looking for. Commercial laundries have many sets and they are looking for stuff that is (cheap + easy) to fix. A lot of laundromats 20 years ago used the GE FilterFlos because the transmissions were a dime a dozen and took next to no time to replace. SpeedQueen and Maytags were also quick, easy and cheap to fix. But almost anyone that has been to laundromats in the last 30 years can remember that most of the frontloaders kept chugging along while a fraction of the toploaders were always "out of service" either because the pump was clogged, the timer was broken or something more serious was going on.
If you have only one washer and one dryer, the equation changes. Unless access to a laundromat is easy and you think it's not expensive, waiting for people to come fix your set can be at the very least annoying.
But looking *just* at frequency of repair is not a panacea either. I have a set that is not the best at anything, it does not clean particularly well, it does not rinse as well as other frontloaders, it takes forever and a day to spin (and many times does not spin at the advertised fast spin, and more than once a year it has "finished" the cycle without spinning). But *hey!*, nearly 14 years and not a *single* repair call.
If you want ideal, you want at the very least two or three sets of washer/dryer, and you want the one with the absolutely *best* performance: put clothes in, press a few buttons, go away, come back, put the clothes in the dryer, press a few buttons, go away, come back to clean dry clothes ready to fold/hang, no stains, no dirt, no missing buttons, no tears or excessive wear. Sure, they may need repair, hopefully simple/cheap ones, once or twice in 15 years or so, but they should make you happy and looking forward to doing laundry as a relaxing experience instead of dreading it.
Attitude does help: friends of mine that wanted to try my equipment before they bought it fell sharply into two neat groups, the group that loaded the washer and had dinner, transferred the stuff to the dryer and had dessert (that group *loved* the set, bought one for themselves and still like them), and the group that watched the things work and how the algorithms failed in different and (not so) interesting ways. That group hated the set and ended up with other brands and models.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
