Yeah, usually 'appliance' on this board means a boring car made by Toyota or the like, but this time it really means appliance. We had to replace our GE washer and I figured I'd share what I experienced since we'll all be at this point sooner or later (sooner if you have GE crap ).
First, the GE washer and dryer we purchased 6 years ago was utter rubbish. The dryer is ok, I guess. But the washer is the biggest hunk of junk I've ever purchased since I last went to the junk yard and asked for "1 hunk of junk, small, please" and got a square foot of junk from the crusher. Ok, that didn't actually happen, but it'd be pretty cool to have a square foot of junk from the crusher wouldn't it?
Ok, returning from the rabbit hole I was going down. This GE machine has been junk from day one. WILL NOT balance anything. It goes off balance so bad it pins the dryer against the work bench and humps it like those two dudes in the SNL skit with the "What is Love?" song playing. It has actually cracked the plastic control panel on the dryer! Anyway, Friday my wife, while doing a load of clothes let the smoke out of the washing machine. I didn't even know they HAD smoke in them! I got into the Service Menu to go through the cycles and determined that the rear bearing is bad. This thing isn't worth putting a bearing in, even if the new bearing comes in a box with a $100 bill inside. So, we decided to replace it.
That part of the story was to serve as a warning. DO NOT buy GE appliances built in the last decade. If you have, start a fund to replace it. They tend to fail in spectacular fashion, not slowly enough to get your ducks in a row.
So, I started to try to find out the best, more reliable brand out there. It appears LG is a good bet, as well as Samsung. But, my internet sluthing turned up a brand I expect some of the, uh, more seasoned among us knows well. Speed Queen. It turns out they are made in the USA. That was about enough to pull the trigger right there. Not for patriotic reasons, but I do think that stuff built here tends to be better quality since the only reason to build over seas is to get costs down, not increase quality. Cheap labor ain't the only way they get costs down. Anyway, Speed Queen is the brand that you'll find in 99% of the coin-op laundromats across the country. Where the craptastic GE (and all the others for that matter) have plastic outer drums, the SQ has higher quality stainless steel drums, inner AND outer. There are no electronics to go bad. The timer is a mechanical timer. All the knobs you turn are making contact with a switch, not sending a signal to a computer. The transmission gears (if the unit you get has one) are made from steel, not compressed graham cracker crumbs like the GE has. VERY little plastic on these, every thing is mechanical. Cost is comparable with the LG or other leaders. Our middle-ground unit costs $850. That's only a few Big Macs more than the GE turd that lasted only 6 years with two repairs in that time.
I know lots of us still try to buy American, and I didn't think there were any appliances that were built here so I thought I'd share.
