Eccentricity / Run-Out

Simple advice for buying washing machines:

1 Choose one that costs less than the three-year extended warranty

2 Don't buy the extended warranty

3 Ideally make it one of the badge engineered brands and choose a non-premium brand so you get all the same features with a different fascia.

4 Keep it running with parts from espares

When our machine eventually gave up (after three sets of brushes and a new controller board when the first set of brushes blew it out) this year it was because it kept cutting out (probably the out of balance detection had gone over-sensitive). I replaced it with an all-singing all dancing hi-capacity high spin-speed Swan with loads of easy eco-programs and a wonderful countdown timer for under £200.

Michael. I seem to remember looking at Miele machines last year when we replaced our machine, we where in a branch of John Lewis where we bought a Bosch machine. I will take a look next time we are there at the warranty it may have been a store enhanced thing as all electricals from them get minimum two years.

Samsung make washing machines too, they play a tune when the wash cycle has finished.

You get an extended warranty free from Samsung.

Well made, reliable, but the picture quality is crap

I wondered about that when we bought our previous machine many years ago, the top of the range ones, Bosch, AEG etc were around £600 + with a 2 year guarantee while a Candy was about £150 with a 1 year guarantee, however for about an extra £100 - £150 you could buy a 5 year guarantee for the Candy, so if you just wanted a basic washing machine without any special features which is a better buy? £600 with a 2 year guarantee or £300 with a 5 year, I'm not quite sure.

John

A bit off piste but highlighting the "Extended warranty". Recently, (last week) bought a double socket adaptor for the telephone wall socket for the princely sum of £1.27 on "The Site", BUT----- for an extra £8 odd I could have a three year extended electrical warranty on said item. Took a lot of soul searching to decline.

Regards Ian.

Edited By Circlip on 28/09/2017 10:40:17

Edited By martin perman on 28/09/2017 10:46:24

My washing machine also sounded like a bucket of rocks, thats because I use the rocks on the banks of the thames to wash my overalls.

I was amazed when I decided I could have a go at repair on an old Indesit I had and the lump of cast concrete on the top of the drum. needless to say it was 12 years old and beyond hope so I invested in one of the direct drive LG washers, which is so quiet and does not take a walk on the spin cycle.

The mention of concrete lump reminds me of the Citroen owner that filled the front "boot" with poured concrete to trim the car up after the rear suspension had given way and he was not going to fork out for the repair. So how about adding more weight to the drum, another 3 CWT should do the trick.

I went into a branch of John Lewis today and took a look at the Miele washing machines. For your £960 odd quid (cheaper version available) you get a two year warranty then you claim an extra eight years full parts and labour warranty in with the price.

If a Miele is knackered then it really is knackered

They go well for 7-10 years(heavy use) then everything goes at once

.

Thanks for that, Chris

... Rather strangely, it appears to be only that one model that offers +8years warranty extension

**LINK**

https://www.johnlewis.com/miele-wdd030-freestanding-ecoplus-comfort-washing-machine-8kg-load-a-energy-rating-1400rpm-spin-white/p3176647?navAction=jump#tabinfo-spcl-off

If you hadn't seen it in-store, I might have assumed it was a typo.

MichaelG.

.

I think you're probably right Ady

... I still haven't checked how old ours is; but it's somewhere in that region.

MichaelG.

It won't be the shaft that has bent, it will have displaced the drum on the spider. When the spider is fitted to the drum, there is usually some small amount of adjustment to get the drum concentric with the shaft. I think this adjustment has moved, or the bolts holding the drum to the spider have bent slightly. |If the shaft itself had bent, you would know about it as soon as it went into spin!

Edit that, if the noise and vibration are appaling, and it is touching the door gasket, time for serious strip down, or a new one. My cousin has an LG, and it has been faultless for several years, and Very quiet, In the same amount of time I have had a Bosch, which suffered spider failure, and now a Gorenje, which has had a new door (it has broken again) and a new tub complete with bearings, all under the five year warranty. Like most things today, unless you pay a lot, and select the models carefully, you get something that will last probably 2 to 3 years if you are lucky.

Edit that, if the noise and vibration are appaling, and it is touching the door gasket, time for serious strip down, or a new one. My cousin has an LG, and it has been faultless for several years, and Very quiet, In the same amount of time I have had a Bosch, which suffered spider failure, and now a Gorenje, which has had a new door (it has broken again) and a new tub complete with bearings, all under the five year warranty. Like most things today, unless you pay a lot, and select the models carefully, you get something that will last probably 2 to 3 years if you are lucky.

Phil,

Thanks for your updates ... I think we have reached the same diagnosis.

... either the drum has slipped [within its manufacturing adjustment range], or something in that mounting area is broken.

The LG direct drive machines do look very promising [low noise level, and good reviews]

MichaelG.

Yes, my cousins is the direct drive model , he is very pleased with it, but I think it was nearly £600!

Yes but... in my experience the extended warranty (bought at purchase) usually costs as much as new machine.

My assumption is that I'm unlikely to have two machines fail without getting three years out of them, bearing in mind that the standard failure curve for electronic equipment has most of the failures in the first few months or after several years.

Neil

In forty years, we've has four washing machines, the first was second hand and I maintained that until the casing disintegrated after six years, the next two had warranties and lasted about fifteen years each and the latest is approx four years old and has no warranty beyond the two years offered, they all ran at least once a day.

One of the machines had several parts replaced but the others have never missed a beat, the latest is a Bosch.

They are like our central heating, it has only ever had two pumps, the one fitted when we moved in 29 years ago and the current one, the boiler is 25 years old and still gets a good bill of health when serviced every year, the reason I think that they have all lasted is because they all work 365 days a year.

Martin P

8 years out of Miele so far, had to de gunge small pipes to get it to realise it had pumped out. Must do more high temp maintenance washes.

14 years out of Zanussi but although the drum bearings are easy to replace the seals were not so easy, at least the surface they run on is hard to repair. Called it a day when you couldn't hear the helicopters going into Benson.

Hotpoint and Indesit were total crap but cheap

Mike

Not a washing machine but a cooker, bought in the January sales in Cambridge in the mid 1990's for around 500 GBP.

Did I want the extended warranty? No thank you.

What about failures? Is this an unreliable cooker? No. OK then no extended warranty.

But the halogen hobs are very expensive when they fail. And so on for 5 minutes or more.

My slighly exasperated final response, "Can I buy this cooker without an extended warranty?"

It's now 20+ years later. For the last 10 years the cooker has been operating in an open air house kitchen in Phuket with the sea air doing it's best to encourage lots of surface rust. Several years back the digital clock failed and I had to bypass it to get power to the main oven. One of the hob switches was threatening to go intermittent last year but the problem went away. Last month a lightning strike punched a hole through a wire's insulation and burnt out a connection (now spliced).

Extended warranties are to make money for the retailer. If you can afford to carry the risk then you'll normally make money out of the deal.

Please excuse the telling of this off topic tale; my traditional family audience now regards this story with ill disguised boredom.

Edited By Colin Whittaker on 29/09/2017 04:07:49