My son alerted me to the new recall of “exploding” Samsung clothes washers. My own piece of junk is not on this list. Which is just as well: Samsung isn’t doing much to help people who own machines that have fallen apart or are likely to.
Consumer Reports, the poor fools, placed the Samsung at the top of its ratings. If you get a kick out of other consumers’ squawks of outrage, don’t miss the hilarious (and not so funny…) endless string of CR readers’ eye-popping experiences with these fine machines. Scroll to the bottom of the article, down to the comments section, and start reading. It’s amazing.
And gratifying: now I feel like maybe I’m not a total nut case. Many a Samsung user reports half-assed performance, ruined clothing, long cycles that leave you with dirty clothes…and on and on. And apparently models other than the ones on the recall list have some alarming mechanical problems.
So far mine has not done anything that looks dangerous — but I hardly use it. Most of the time, I wash my clothes by hand (because the washer either won’t get them clean or braids them into knots, as above) and just run them through the washer’s rinse cycle. That doesn’t make much of a demand on the washer.
My son’s crapped out a couple of years ago…and since he bought his a couple years after I bought mine, his didn’t last long at-tall. Considering the price of the damn things, that is just outrageous. Apparently they’re going to send him about $150.
Whoop de doo.
Here in town there’s a store that sells brand-new scratched and dented appliances and that does repair work. It’s NOT a big box store. It’s NOT Sears (never again!). And it IS a locally owned business. Even though my Samsung is running OK on the rinse cycle, I’m seriously thinking it’s time to pay that merchant a visit to see if they can come up with something that…oh…you know…works?
WOW…and those Samsungs weren’t cheap…Not a fan of CR any more, their tests, predictions and recommendations leave a bit to be desired. I share your pain as I paid entirely TOO much money for a Maytag Neptune TL that died “prematurely”. Some would say the “NEPTUNE DEBACLE” is what killed Maytag and led to the Whirlpool takeover. I’m happy to report the “new Maytag” we bought to replace the Neptune continues to amaze. This thing is HUGE and I’m pretty sure we could fit a circus tent in it if need be. You may want to give this model some consideration. It’s large capacity, very efficient (the clothes about come out dry) AND a “top loader”….no more mold or leaky gasket issues…$150 to DS for his unit is a joke IMHO….
Yes, that’s exactly how I’ve come to feel about CR…which is too bad, because it used to be a dependable source of leads to reasonably priced, reliable products. Some years ago, as I understand it, there was a change of management — they got rid of the people whose ethic we had come to trust, and the result has been…this.
Okay, so you LIKE the Maytag? Then, have they improved their products? Again years ago, I got the impression the old, dependably high-quality Maytag had crashed and burned, and that their present products are junque.
I will definitely take a look at it.
My particular neurosis is that having grown up with a Bendix, I have exactly ZERO point zero-zero (count it: 0.00) desire to bend down and haul wet laundry out of a front-loader…ever again! The whole front-loader wonder seems to me emblematic of the retrograde direction we’re going in, where consumer goods of all kinds are concerned. More and more expensive appliances, allegedly “efficient” (which means only that they don’t work very well) that are engineered to give out within seven years (when the same appliances used to last upwards of 15 years); clothing that falls apart; toilets that don’t flush; faucets that dribble out water so that you wander off to do some other chore while your spaghetti pan fills up and then overflows and so you waste more water than you would have had you just been allowed to fill up the pan in two seconds instead of 30; washers that take an hour and ten minutes to do a 20-minute job (when they’re not breaking your jaw…); lightbulbs that turn people green (whenever they get bright enough for you to see colors at all), thermostats that spy on you, and on and on. None of these things, I’m sorry, NONE of them are improvements!
Au contraire. They’re de-provements.
I don’t have the time, energy and strength for hand washing ANYTHING and I’m still in my 50’s. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t own a dryer, so I hang my clothes to dry. Saves me money and the clothes last longer and look better. But I sure as hell ain’t hand washing ’em!
If all you’re doing is soaking them and, whenever you get around to it, briefly (cursorily!) wringing them out and then throwing them in the machine for a rinse & spin, it’s not very hard — and it surely DOES get your laundry done faster. And where this Samsung machine is concerned, even the briefest of hand-washing (as in a couple of sloshes and a fast wring) gets them noticeably cleaner than running them through the entire wash cycle does.
Obviously you can’t wash your sheets & towels that way. Take a look at those comments on the CR page, though: several people complain about the Samsung shredding their sheets. That leaves me wondering if that expensive sheet I bellyached about a few weeks ago actually ripped of its own volition…or if it was given some help by a malign machine.
Yah, though I kept my dryer, I don’t use it very much. It’s SO much easier to just hang most of the stuff on clothes hangers, let them air dry…and voila. Walk them back to their closet whenever I feel like it. Which is not right this freaking, BUZZING instant.
The Samsung’s with problems were their top loaders. I got the cheapest front loader I could get (either LG or Samsung) and I got the Samsung. I haven’t had any problems with it, but most front loaders are the same so it doesn’t matter the brand. Basically, they do take longer but they use less water. We cloth diaper so I promise it gets tons of use but works fine still. One thing we do to keep it clean (as front loaders can get stinky) is we leave the door open in between washes (ours is in basement).
I hate top loaders as I’ve had numerous pieces of clothing damaged with tiny holes by the agitator. Haven’t had that problem since.
🙂 Yup, mine’s a top-loader. LOL! If you’re into cloth diapers, you ARE using the washer a lot. We did that for awhile, but I didn’t have the ambition to keep them on the kid for two whole years.
The Samsung’s top-loader is one of those no-agitator numbers. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t get the clothes very clean. I never had my agitator washers damage clothes — and they sure didn’t braid them into ropes! 😀 You should have seen some of the constructions that have come out of the Samsung.
If I read the comments correctly, it sounds like you have an impeller washer rather than an agitator washer. Tangling clothes is not unheard of with impeller washers. It’s more common when loads are smaller/larger than the selected size on the machine or if clothes are piled more on top of, rather than around the impeller.
Impeller, eh? Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsRnL9yfQnY
And also this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSTmhIvWS9Y
The Samsung doesn’t quite look like the Maytag in that mini-video. It’s flatter on the bottom, with shallower, flattish discrete vane-like things.. Water flows in from the top. Maybe the Maytag works better because of that cone-like structure on the bottom? Hmmm…okay…. In another video the top-loading Samsung is called an impeller.
It doesn’t have an option to select a size of load. You get a temperature selection and a series of selections based on the type of fabric or product being washed. Selecting any of these appears to change only the length of time the machine runs:
EcoCold: 1 hour 6 min
Stain Away: 1 hour 13 min
Active Wear: 42 min
Delicates: 35 min
Wool: 42
Quick Wash: 34
Rinse & Spin: 21
Bedding: 1 hr 10 min
Towels: 50 min
Sanitize: 2 hours
Heavy Duty: 1 hr 1 min
Normal: 50 min
No instructions are given about how to insert the clothing or about what size of load is supposed to go with the type of cycle. Anyone who’s ever used a washer, presumably, would know to distribute items evenly around the tub’s circumference to forestall an unbalanced load. By and large, though, the machine starts out with a kind of jiggling around that moves the clothes to the outside edge of the tub, so if you had piled them on top of molded impeller, they would be shifted off the top of its vanes.
The only one of these cycles that consistently works fairly well is the bedding cycle. Heavy Duty will do OK if you get the items good and wet first, so the machine is tricked into “thinking” the load is larger (i.e., heavier) than it is and then fills with enough water to actually wash the fabric.
The Quick Wash cycle will also do sort of OK if you only put a very few items in the washer and again, if you trick the machine by soaking the clothing with water to make the load appear heavier than it really is.
If you put bedding in the “normal” or the “quick wash” cycle, it will not get completely wet. Sometimes it won’t get wet in the “bedding” cycle, either. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe a sheet that comes out of the washer with bone-dry spots on it is clean. Maybe I’m old-fashioned about that…but I ain’t a-gunna change muh mind! 😀
But seriously: think of that! The bedding cycle runs for OVER AN HOUR! So if you have, say, four loads of clothes (two of coloreds and two of whites, which you surely could if you had several kids, or if one of the adults was a laborer), it would take you four hours and 40 minutes — almost FIVE hours! Not counting the time required to move the clothing to a dryer, take them out of the dryer, fold or hang them, and put them away — to do a week’s laundry. That’s almost half your day. If both parents work, they only have two days on the weekend to do all their chores and errands. So…are they supposed to spend two evenings during the week washing clothes? So much for “quality time” with the kiddies, eh?
Hmmmm… Here’s CR on agitator washers, in which the editors ruminate about consumers’ preference for them: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/11/top-loader-agitator-washers-still-tops-in-sales/index.htm
Well I am indeed sold on the Maytag. When the Neptune died, we were in shock. We paid a premium price for what we thought was a premium product. And we were disappointed. Rather than rush right out, I did some research… actually quite a bit. And DW was very unhappy …”being without a washing machine”. Anyway best I could find out this Maytag (Bravo series 300) was designed by the Maytag engineers before they were bought out. And the research I did showed that it was built with “over-kill” parts that Maytag was famous for. We then went and visited a show room where they wanted “TOO MUCH MONEY” for it. We then went to Lowes and purchased the same unit with a combination of coupons, “energy saver” rebates AND it was on sale for cheap because f the bad press about the Neptunes.
Anyway this thing is HUGE….when you see it in the store….it is the tallest which takes some getting used to. It’s electronics are sophisticated but not too sophisticated and when this thing goes to spin cycle…it sounds like a helicopter…very cool…This thing is moving and the clothes come out just about dry…Which means less energy and time to dry them.
One bit of advice….a model variance is offered with a “glass” lid so you can see your clothes being washed…But it cost $100-125 more…We chose to forego this option. Hope this helps….