Samsung recalls 2.8 million top loading washing machines for explosion risk

What is with Samsungs and exploding!?

This is the craziest thing ever.

I have one of these washers. I've been tearing my hair out - over the last few months, but more immediately over the last couple of hours - because my machine isn't working properly. We're facing down eight years of college payments, so are trying to be very careful with money and were hoping to avoid buying a new one.

So, guess who is super happy about this? I mean right up to the point where my washing machine explodes.

I cringed when I saw the headline. Fortunately I have one of the stackable front-loaders.

Perks said:

This is the craziest thing ever.

I have one of these washers. I've been tearing my hair out - over the last few months, but more immediately over the last couple of hours - because my machine isn't working properly. We're facing down eight years of college payments, so are trying to be very careful with money and were hoping to avoid buying a new one.

So, guess who is super happy about this? I mean right up to the point where my washing machine explodes.

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I have an appliance repair company I have used for probably 30 years or more, very honest. When I was having problems with my first washer I called and explained the problem. She (original guy's wife, current guy's mother) said it could be this or it could be that. She pulled out her file on me and asked if it was the same machine they had repaired several years earlier. When I said yes she told me to go buy a new washer.

Flash forward roughly 20 years. Having a problem with that replacement machine. After having gone and looked at washers in a couple of stores, and not liking what I saw, I called in the hope they were still in business. They were, he came and fixed it easily. The Mom told me the only brand of washer they recommend is Speed Queen. I checked into them, they make a *real* old style washer. Where you control the water level, not the machine. Where you have an impeller (that thing in the middle that makes the clothes go around), not some kind of empty tub that "cleans" your clothes through some kind of black magic. When I end up having to get a new one I'm only looking at Speed Queen.

MM

I bought a Speed Queen top-loader two years ago for similar reasons -- read as much as I could about brand repair rates and reliability, and Speed Queen rose to the top. So far, so good. I like the lack of fancy display and electronics, actually. Good ol' fashioned rotary and mechanical push-button switches.

Mind, they have drawbacks. Yes, they're rather primitively built, which I hope equates to old-fashioned sturdiness. But it means they don't spin out as well as other brands (IIRC, 1000RPM for this Speed Queen vs 1400 RPM for the dead Fisher Paykel it replaced), which means longer drying times. They're also not water-thrifty like front-loaders. (But in our case, on a well in a temperate place, that's less of a concern.)

When I first heard about this, I wondered if it was a parody article at first because it sounds so ridiculous.

Samsung isn't having a good year.

They really screwed up, because this thing involves millions of units.

And oh joy, our washer is one of the models on the list. Looking at the darned thing, it's hard to see how the lid can possibly come off (seems really solidly attached), but it sounds like a pretty serious issue potentially. It makes me glad our washer and drier are in the garage behind a heavy duty fire wall, and not the house. Unfortunately, when my husband went to their website to start the process for getting a repair order (and to get the interim warning labels they will be sending pending repair), the samsung site was so jammed up that his request didn't go through. So looks like we have to wait until it's less busy, or call them (and likely be on hold forever). Wonderful what with everything else we're having to deal with right now.

All I'll say is that the picture at the top of the article in the Consumerist got my attention. Thankfully, we have a Speed Queen.

The site refused to let me read the article. It kept putting up a video that covered the article or REALLY covered the article. Guess they knew I didn't need to read it, have a different brand.

I also bought the repairman's recommendation based on what he repaired least and was easiest to work on. GE with basic controls and no weirdness.
ABC, not happy with you.

Everywhere I've ever lived, I've managed to find the local guy who rebuilds and resells washers and dryers. We bought a refurbed, very basic GE set 4 years ago when we bought this house for $400. They're still going strong. Meanwhile. various relatives have been in and out of various high-priced newfangled systems that take much longer to complete the cycle and don't seem to clean nearly as well, if they work at all, and seem to require regular visits from high-priced technicians to maintain them.

Sometimes, progress isn't.

I bought a Speed Queen on the advice of my appliance guy. It was pricey - around $900 - but it has no electronic board, which he said is what tends to break in the modern washers, and if/when it does, it's so expensive to fix that it's not worth it and you end up just buying another machine.

My machine has knobs that you turn, and they make that knobby noise like when I was a kid.

I thought the recall and fixing of the machines costs more than extending the original testing of the new machines before sending them out. From the number of recalls, I'm beginning to doubt that.
Has Samsung recently changed ownership?

This huge multinational industrial concern can't manufacture anything that doesn't explode?

caw

blacbird said:

This huge multinational industrial concern can't manufacture anything that doesn't explode?

caw

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They make good TVs.

MM