Whirlpool wants to buy Maytag, hmmm...

[doug05311863]

Whirlpool product 1:  a dehumidifier which potentially catches on fire.  Whirlpool frantically mails me notice after notice warning me to have some retrofit parts installed in it.  This was supposed to be done by a repair shop, which they gave me a list of in my area.  

I had actually thrown the thing away because it continually froze up.  When I didn't respond, I received urgent notices asking me if I still owned the dehumidifier for years afterwards.

Whirpool product 2:  a washing machine that ceased to work about 1 week after the 1-year warranty period.  The plastic lid switch just disintegrated and I had to remove it. It is now hanging over the side of the machine, taped to it and held permanently closed with a paper clip.

Whirpool said that they would pay for me to have a technician come out and fix it.  I made several calls to local repair shops, but nobody was interested.  I just figured they were too busy responding to the dehumidifier problems.

KitchenAide made excellent appliances.  Whirlpool bought them too.  

Unless GM has gotten their quality problems under control, selling more product is going to have the exact reverse effect.  It's going to piss more people off.  Better to just pull back and make rock solid cars and start back up again.

[manwslohand]

I have one of those dehumidifiers. Got the notice and they sent a technician out and "fixed" it. No problems since but my wife's still paranoid about it catching fire and won't leave it turned on while we're not home.

[Jeremy Singer]

You should tell them that you hadn't responded because it took you a long time to reconstruct the the water damaged correspondance after the fire...

[ITWhore]

When I bought my house 15 years ago (wow, how the years fly by), I bought a Maytag washing machine & dryer.  I have had absolutely no problem with it.  Of course, being single and on the road a lot, maybe these 15 years are equivalent to 3 or 5 "regular" years.

And perhaps for the steal of the century, when I was in 1989 and moving into an apartment in Orange County, CA, I needed to get a fridge.  At that time, the state had a fund to help improve energy efficiency, so they were giving $50 to $75 for folks to buy a new energy efficient fridge.  Even though I was not replacing a fridge, I got the discount.  After the discount, this 16 ft^2 fridge by Kelvinator cost only $350.  And absolutely no problems.

[doug05311863]

Maytag, as far as I know, made perfectly good washing machines.  A company like Whirlpool buys up rivals who happen to make better products and then shuts them down.  Or maybe they continue operating Maytag, but competition is  over, since it wouldn't make sense to compete against yourself.  Either the quality is reduced, or the prices get jacked up so that the brand becomes a "high end" washing machine.

But it won't stop here.  If they haven't already, Whirlpool will eventually not make any washing machines at all.  They will simply sell washing machines made in Asia.  If a Chinese comany tries to get the distribution channel for itself, people will start howling about how the Chinese are trying to take over the American economy. I guess this is Whirlpool's prerogative.

This might be a case where globalization is not a bad thing and "buying American" is.  If the only American company who makes washing machines makes crummy washing machines, should one "buy American"?