Mom’s 14 year old washer died in the middle of the cycle. Tub full of water. Thankfully she has a good neighbor. They wrung the clothes out and took them to their house. They’ll wash and dry them.
Mom called Home Depot, Sears and several other stores. Nobody keeps washers & dryers in stock. They have the floor models for display.
It’ll take a week to get a washer/dryer in stock and delivered.
Mom already knows these new washers are terrible. I have a Maytag Bravos XL top loader. I’ve been so disappointed. Takes twice as long to wash a load. It spends a lot of time turning the drum, stopping, and deciding if more water is needed. Some kind of computer magic.
Takes 65 mins to wash a load on power wash. You can’t just spin the dial and run an extra rinse/spin cycle. Can’t stop the washer and let items soak because it dumps the water after ten mins.
Mom decided to get the Top line LG top loader. Her neighbor has one. It has the same water saving limitations. Mom will have to get used to it.
Thats modern technology for you. It’s always a massive step backwards in convenience.
Quite a surprise that stores don’t stock washers and dryers anymore. Something to consider if you have an old machine.
What was wrong with the old washer? Could it have been repaired? I remember one time my age 60+ at the time mother fixed her own washer herself. On the central post where the washer tub sat, the top piece that screwed on to keep the tub secured to the post had worn out and the tub would just rise up with the water level. She took a bread tie and tied it around the post and re-sat the tub, and screwed the little top piece over the bread tie on top of the post. It worked just fine for well over 10 years (she eventually had the bad part replaced - don’t know how much that cost, but it couldn’t have been much or she would have just replaced the entire washer.) I have that washer now and have never had any trouble with it.
Best Buy doesn’t have a store in my mom’s town. I don’t know if that matters or not?
The ordering is through the web. I guess the appliance ships directly to the delivery service. I don’t know if they deliver any place or only in a store’s local area.
My mom is a hundred miles from me. All I know is the washer stopped and wouldn’t start again. It’s a Kitchenaid washer/dryer bought around 2001.
Neighbor looked at it. He used a hand pump to drain the water from the tub.
It might be fixable. But service calls these days are so expensive. I suspect it would easily cost $150 or more. Washing machines can take time to get apart for servicing.
aceplace57, we have one of those annoying Maytag washers too. The trick to soaking is to let it fill and swish around a few minutes then hit the pause button and open the lid. It won’t drain while it waits for you to close the lid and hit the pause button again to finish the cycle. I’ve let it sit for over an hour. Give it a try.
Onto the digression. What about the noises that come out of this thing? Buzzing, swishing, clunking, clicking. Good thing it has a clear plastic lid so you can see it’s working not shredding your clothes.
yeah even sears Kenmore got rid of their agitator washers…mine has a sticker warning the washer will sound different that the old washers of the past and stops and starts more …
even on the lowest load setting it still takes an hour …
We have an warranty and sears replaced the old one after 10 years because no one made the parts for it took 2 days 1 for them to clear the purchase and another one for us to pick it out , they delivered 4 hours later …
I must’ve lucked out when my 20+ year washer rusted out a couple of years ago: I got a no-frills top loading agitator, Kenmore brand, from Sears.
My husband couldn’t believe I picked that over a front loader.
I told him the new front loaders are more problematic than they’re worth. Hell, if I hadn’t been able to get the agitator I would’ve said screw it and just take everything down to the laundromat where the front loaders don’t have all the computer stuff.
We just bought a new dryer from Home Depot. They had many to choose from, but my wife was fed up with fancy features that fail and just wanted a plain vanilla one, which they had and it was about the cheapest. They delivered it a week later and though they charged a bit extra, they took the old one away. While we were there we also priced washers, which we might need soon. They also had many models of them.
We paid through the nose for it, but this past Spring I got a Speed Queen top loader that has both the water saver cycle and the regular kind. TBH, I found the water saver is just as effective as the water waster one, although it may be due to it being a high end machine. (I wouldn’t have gotten such an expensive one, but given what my sister has had to pay out in repair costs for her maybe-two-years-old Maytag, I figured it might be the best way to go about it.) It came from an appliance store, but I don’t know if they had it in stock or not, because I arranged delivery based on my work schedule.
Edited to add, it does seem to take longer to wash a load, and it has a lot of long pauses, but it is quieter and the clothes come out noticeably less wet.
