First let me start by saying that in general I am a real fan of Electrolux products from vacuum cleaners to their wonderful Wascomat commercial line of washers. However, anyone contemplating the purchase of a small front load washer sold under any of the above Electrolux brands in the 16 to 17 pound sizes (3.1 to 3.5 CF) should be aware that they are building them to throw away standards. As a professional repair man and owner of these machines it has come to my attention that the main support or spider hiding behind that gorgeous stainless steel basket is made of white metal which corrodes so badly that it will fail after only 5 to 6 years with a horrendous crash. Typically there will be about a quart of nasty corrosion hiding behind the basket which has been mixing with your clothes all this time.
The "spider" or basket support is removable or separable from the basket and SHOULD cost
around $100.00 or so but guess what. This is where the SCAM comes in (forgetting for the moment that they should never have used "white metal" in the first place). You see they don't sell the shaft and spider by themselves even though it is easy to unbolt it from the basket. Oh no, you must buy the entire stainless steel basket along with the shaft and spider so now the price is over $470.00 for the GE brand and about $300.00 for the same exact thing under the Frigidaire and other labels!! Add to this the cost of labor to take the drum out of the cabinet and disassemble the drum and you have a repair bill over $600.00! The best price I have found new is here: Enter part # AP2107258 (copy #, click on the ad at left and paste in the part # for the very best price)
In other words they have due to their greed relegated that $600.00 to $800.00 washer to the dump. No one in their right mind is going to spend that kind of money repairing one of these machines when for about the same money or another one to two hundred bucks they can purchase a new machine.
Until Electrolux (the parent company) decides to rein in their greed I simply cannot recommend these machines. It is a shame as they are otherwise a great machine. I would love to hear from others who have run into this same problem. Maybe with enough people getting together we can change some attitudes.
2 comments:
- I am not sure how old this post is (april 17, 2010?), but I would like to add that you need to remove the vanes in the tub as the new new tub does not come with them. I should know better than to throw out old parts before the job is done since I work at sea for a living, but was still dissapointed in electrolux for not including them and that they cost $13 each plus shipping.
- February 26, 2009 8:43 AM
- Thanks for the comment Odpoe, Reason for the odd dates is to keep my blogs in order of oldest first so the blog makes more sense. Trouble is you have to click on the archive posts on the right in order to see the rest (newer actually) of the story AND pictures. They should make that an option as to the order of things posted but last time I looked that was not an option so you have to cheat with dates.
I am not sure how old this post is (april 17, 2010?), but I would like to add that you need to remove the vanes in the tub as the new new tub does not come with them. I should know better than to throw out old parts before the job is done since I work at sea for a living, but was still dissapointed in electrolux for not including them and that they cost $13 each plus shipping.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Odpoe, Reason for the odd dates is to keep my blogs in order of oldest first so the blog makes more sense. Trouble is you have to click on the archive posts on the right in order to see the rest (newer actually) of the story AND pictures. They should make that an option as to the order of things posted but last time I looked that was not an option so you have to cheat with dates.
ReplyDeleteJ
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I'm not a professional appliance repair man but I am a professional Mechanical Engineer. I just tore apart a Gibson front loader with the broken spider, I couldn't agree more with the repairman. The spider is a nice sturdy die-cast aluminum part, but mine was corroded thru pretty much everywhere you wouldn't want it to corrode thru. My guess is that laundry soap is a little on the alkaline side and eats up the aluminum, or they are using an alloy with a lot of copper and zinc in it - this would make for a strong part but very prone to corrosion. This problem would have been picked up in early product testing, where you run it for a good long time then pull it apart to see how it's going. I cannot believe that this problem was not dealt with in the design stage, so I can only conclude that they want it to break after awhile. If they were serious about solving the problem, there are a number of things that could be done - the die that molds the part could be modified to make the part thicker, allowing the use of a weaker but more corrosion resistant alloy. Or, they could paint or powder coat the part, or coat it with something to prevent the soapy water from getting to the aluminum. Or the part could be redesigned as a collection of build-up stainless stampings. At the very least, if they cared even a little bit, they wouldn't make you buy a new drum, which I'm sure in every case is perfectly good already and the shipping cost for a great big drum will be so high. No engineering group designing something like this would do such a bad job unless they were told to do so by the Dilbert boss man. No company that cared about their customers would let this situation knowingly go on, and some of these posts are pretty old so I'm sure they know all about it. My question to them is - why pick on your fellow American (or Canadian)? This is what drove the car business to Japan.
ReplyDeleteI am sure this is made in China junk....
ReplyDeleteI have just purchased a new Electrolux (EIFLW50LIW) washing machine. Not sure what year it was manufactured), but I am wondering if I should return it. How can I know that I have not purchased this problem?
ReplyDeleteI just opened up our GE front-load washer WBVH6240F0WW for what I thought was a bearing problem. I discovered a broken spyder. The corrosion was significant. The washer was about 5 years old used in a two person household. VERY disappointed in the quality of the part and EXTREMELY disappointed that I am unable to source only the spyder. Wasteful. What is doubly troubling is that in a factory somewhere, someone is screwing these spyders and drums together and YET they don't offer the parts separately. It makes NO sense. I am off to the dump and the appliance store. I will not be returning with a GE product.
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I just tore my FTF530ES1 Frigidaire to replace what I thought was a bearing problem and low and behold all three arms of the spider are broken. My question is this: what can I purchase that is worth the money and my consumer trust, because I do not to pay them to keep ripping us off, a form of boycot if you will. Join me.
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