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Ours shot craps this morning. In the market for a new one. Local place sells GE and Speed Queen. They said the speed queens are basically the same as in a laundromat, just without the coin slot. They are also $300 more than a GE. Is it worth it?????
Ours is a Whirlpool. It's 5 years and one month, to the day.
Appliances don't seem to last like they did in the past. My brother has replaced his front loaders three times in 25 years and my ancient washing machine keeps on washing.
They are getting to complicated and electronic. Forget the circuit boards and go back to simple things I say. Anyway good website that has saved me a ton of money in repairs is:
Appliance Parts Pros.com Discount Appliance Parts – Since 1999
They have good videos if you want to tackle the repair or diagnose the problem. I've repaired my washer and dryer several times.
Between them and YouTube I found the information needed.
We used to have whirlpool front loaders. The computer went bad in both of the ones I had. It died after 3 years on the last one. Now I have the speed queen in the washer and dryer. We have had them for 5 years now. Yes they are worth it. Great capacity and reliability. There is no computer to go bad. Really the only thing to worry about is the belt going bad.
We have Maytag (on sale) with knobs and no digital controls. Top loader. No problems over past 5 years. We have limited space, so we had to buy a GE dryer to fit the space. Dryer also has knobs. Had to replace timer and plastic select knobs on the dryer which was easy to do. Got them on line at the above mentioned parts place.
Who needs "fancy" to wash dirty drawers.
Thanks all ! I looked at the above website, and others. Part of me wants to repair it, and save some money. However, then I'm halfway - or more - into what we paid for it. And the question of, what next.
When I told my wife the cost of the speed queens, I thought for sure she would have NO! I would have lost that bet!!!
The good news is, the store that sells them is here in town. And I sold my boat on Saturday, so we could easily pay cash for it. Wait, scratch that. Can't believe I just said that out loud!!!!!!
On my dryer last time it was the control board which was $300 bucks. I looked online though and all you really had to do was disassemble and re-solder the board in 2 places. I did this and it worked and has been running a long time now. Total cost for repair.....$0
If you do buy new, buy from a dealer that does their own repair. I made the mistake to buy a washer from Lowes, and I had a problem with it when it was only about 2 weeeks old. Liowes doesn't have repair personnel and I had to look elsewhere. Even the manufacturer could find someone to work on it. I finally call a local repair man and he directed me to someone that did warranty work for this machine. Next time I will buy local from someone who services what they sell even if it's a little more costly. Try going for a week without a washer and you'll see what I mean.
"gene"
We just made an executive decision, getting a speed queen, from local dealer. Gonna stop there tomorrow morning, when I get off work, and buy it.
Wife and I went to a local man who sold refurbished Maytag and Whirpool. This was over 2 years ago now. We bought a refurbished Whirpools washer for 200.00, they delivered, installed and hauled off the old all included in that price. Now we are needing a dryer soon and will go back to the same man. Makes good sense to me.
Funfishers - if that was an alternative, we would look into it.
This same place sells scratch and dent models also. However, at the moment, they do not have any scratch and dent washers. They do have fridges though!
We went with the speed queen tr5. The reason for the tr5 vs the tr3? Two more years of warranty, and an extra option - for $50 more. This warranty (5 years) is supposed to include parts, labor, and fixed at your house. Hopefully we never have to put it to the test!!
We've only ran a couple loads through it. It is noticably quieter than the Whirlpool was, and so far, does a better job.
Fingers crossed.
They all break a few days after the warranty expires.