
Samsung Recalls 2.8M Top-Load Washing Machines - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/04/500685316/samsung-recalls-2-8-million-top-load-washers-over-disloding-lids
======
jdietrich
I'm surprised that anyone still makes top-loading washing machines. They
completely disappeared from the UK market decades ago, due to the vastly
superior energy and water efficiency of front-loading machines.

Does anyone know why top-loading machines persist in the US market?

~~~
roseburg
Few reasons. One is a positive history/experience with them. The Whirlpool
made (most common machines on the market) top loading machines were rock solid
for 30 plus years. People would often have them for 20-30 years. (and still
have them, keep them maintained)

Another reason is they do a better job of washing clothes as they use more
water. This is important for people that have kids, do cloth diapers, or are
actually washing dirty/muddy clothes. They also don't have mold issues because
of rubber gaskets and have been historically cheaper to maintain and repair.

The new top loaders, specifically Whirlpool made vertical modular washers are
complete garbage. They break within 2-3 years of buying new. Whirlpool stopped
making the direct drive top loading washers that everyone loved about 3 years
ago. Now you can only buy them used, and I would highly recommend doing so if
you need a good washer.

Front loading machines do spin the clothes a bit dryer, which saves on dry
time, unless you hang dry, then it really doesn't make much difference. But
they cost over twice as much and are about double the price when it comes to
repairs. Hope that helps!

Here's a post I wrote up on the subject.
[http://recraigslist.com/2015/10/they-used-to-
last-50-years/](http://recraigslist.com/2015/10/they-used-to-last-50-years/)

~~~
nickpsecurity
" The Whirlpool made (most common machines on the market) top loading machines
were rock solid for 30 plus years. People would often have them for 20-30
years."

This is no exaggeration. The one that broke for me was estimated by the
technician to be 20 years old with the dryer he said was probably 30 years
old. We'd kept them for years and years with no need for repairs. They did the
job.

I told him in IT that complexity just made stuff break more often or take more
work to fix. My prediction was that the old stuff was still more reliable &
cheaper to fix. He confirmed this was true. Said the new stuff was all garbage
that kept him in good business. I asked for the most reliable, used, old
washer he had in stock at their warehouse at the time. The one he gave me for
$80-100 looks old as the other stuff but similarly works fine.

I never buy new washers or dryers. I'd consider newer dishwashers because both
Consumer Reports I read a long time ago and personal experience had them
breaking a lot. I'm curious about feedback if they've improved in reliability
over time. Washers & dryers the old ones win hands down at 20-30 years
operation. They're the mainframes of appliances.

~~~
roseburg
Yeah, you were wise to listen to him. Another tell is to go into used
appliance stores and see what they carry the most of. Most used appliance
shops won't even bother refurbishing many machines now because it's not cost
effective and they don't trust that they will make it out of their warranty
before breaking.

Dishwashers, stay away from Frigidaire entirely. They are made disposable. 2-3
years is the average life before needing a repair. I've had the best
experience with Whirlpool dishwashers. KitchenAid has gone downhill in the
past 5 years or so, in terms of quality.

------
JoelBennett
As someone who currently has a Samsung stove, I can wholeheartedly say I hate
the thing. The interface is one of the worst I've seen - touch "buttons" on a
stove. It does't work half the time if your hands are the slightest bit wet -
which they often are after washing hands. It's incredibly frustrating, and has
completely thrown me off about buying any sort of Samsung appliance.

Samsung has such potential, but it's untested things make me wonder about
their long-term value.

~~~
acchow
> touch "buttons" on a stove

What exactly is the process in an organization that leads to products like
this?

~~~
emp_zealoth
Touch buttons on the stove (assuming they are like the ones we have at home)
mean the stove is just one flat glass pane that is impossible to make dirty.

Yes, the buttons are kinda retarded and unresponsive, but if you fry something
and have droplets of burned oil fly everywhere you just take a cloth with a
little detergent and it just wipes off.

No more crusty disgusting matter growing on nooks and crannies of knobs that
you have to operate on to get off the damn thing

~~~
thinkmassive
Obviously it works great, and the next logical step is voice control /s

~~~
yen223
Non-contact interfaces would be a godsend in the kitchen.

------
i998sd9as89
It is amazing how many things that were a solved problem at least 40 years ago
continue to be reinvented badly.

~~~
Kenji
Know-how has to be maintained. Knowledge has to be passed down to the
apprentices and juniors. Otherwise it is lost over time and has to be
rediscovered/reinvented, often by failures like in the article. Technological
progress is never guaranteed or a certainty. Progress is the result of
incremental improvements and sustainable hard work.

~~~
emodendroket
I suppose the classic example is concrete.

That said, is that really the problem here, or a culture of trying to rush
products to the market?

~~~
mysterypie
Another example is mechanical parts and linkages. In the early 20th century
there were many incredibly intricate mechanical devices -- the Curta
calculator is an example[1] -- that have been replaced by semiconductors. I
wonder if those could even be made today without having to recreate the
knowledge and manufacturing processes.

[1] [https://calculating.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/curta-
calcul...](https://calculating.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/curta-calculator-
breakdown.jpg)

~~~
vvanders
A coworker had one of those and brought it in one day, an absolute marvel to
behold.

------
americandream
Dang it. We bought the Samsung instead of LG, because of videos[1] that showed
the LG exploding.

Top load models have a much large capacity than front loaders, but there are
some serious challenges to overcome for these models that lack a central
agitator column.

Despite being billed as "water saving", ours often has to repeat the setup for
the spin cycle. It does this by dumping several gallons of water, sloshing the
clothes around until it calculates an even load, then starting the drain+spin
again.

If you are unlucky, this can happen multiple times. We are tipped off by the
noise of the machine momentarily whacking into the surrrounding items in the
laundry room.

It seems Samsung is offering "free repairs", but that makes me wonder if it's
just a technician with a USB cable coming to reduce things like spin rate or
make the machine even more likely to halt and prompt for intervention (ugh--
wet clothes are heavy).

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_z4fjiCz6tU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_z4fjiCz6tU)

~~~
smokinjuan
The "free repair" includes "reinforcement of the washer top." I haven't had
any trouble with mine, but I don't pay much attention to it.

[https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/Samsung-Recalls-Top-
Load-W...](https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/Samsung-Recalls-Top-Load-Washing-
Machines)

~~~
americandream
That's good news. In any event, the spin cycle is fast enough (in the 1/2m•v^2
sense) that even before the recall, I wouldn't let my small kids in the same
room with it. A repair still won't fix that precaution.

------
msane
Is Samsung in the middle of an industrial sabatage capaign?

------
smaili
Looks like 2016 has been a tough year for Samsung. Obviously not directly
comparable, but this has somewhat reminded me of Chipotle's past troubles and
the impact its had on customer perception.

~~~
tedajax
Has Chipotle's customer perception been hurt that much? I know personally the
threat of E. coli infection, while certainly higher than it should have been,
was not really that much worse and I certainly didn't stop going to Chipotle
over it. Maybe that's just myself but I know I've heard similar sentiments
from others. Has Chipotle said how much damage they think was done?

~~~
encoderer
They have negative same-store growth.

~~~
acchow
Post hoc ergo propter hoc

~~~
jerf
OK, sure, but what else have you got? Shall we run a controlled double-blind
experiment where we expose only half of the participants to the idea that e
coli was found at Chipotle, but not the other half, and repeat it in 20
distinct different cultures?

It's not exactly a crazy theory that "people eat less at a store than has been
in the national news for poisoning people". Science and logic do not require
us to pretend to be _complete_ idiots.

------
narrator
I recently replaced a Samsung washer after the thing started to stain my
clothes with rust that was getting generated from the internal parts of the
machine chipping and exposing the rustable interior to the water. Got a Speed
Queen and am happy.

------
clinq
I don't know what's going on with Samsung's QA process. Their cellphone apps
are buggy, their newest flagship cellphone has a design flaw that is still
being root-caused after global recall, now another hardware design flaw in
washing machine.

But today, a complain from my friend who works in Samsung Research America at
MTV may explain something: on his posted screenshot, the boss sent an email to
ask them to fix bugs during the weekends...

------
jsmith0295
Well, at least these aren't bursting into flames. (Although, hilariously
enough, they are still sort of exploding, just in a different way.)

~~~
taspeotis
Their other model catches on fire [1]. (Under "FAQs" click "What is the
issue?")

[1]
[http://www.samsung.com/au/washingmachinerecall/](http://www.samsung.com/au/washingmachinerecall/)

~~~
jsmith0295
That is too funny, almost too good to be true...kinda like how Anthony Weiner
got pulled into all this Clinton scandal business.

~~~
discordianfish
Funny you say it this way. I would say Hillary got pulled into the Weiner
scandal..

~~~
jsmith0295
That is a better way of saying it, I was more thinking of it from the
perspective of the media coverage

------
fapjacks
Well, Samsung has made its entire business out of making the crapiest goods
possible. They are masters of the "it works within the definition of 'works'
according to the warranty until the warranty expires" which Americans just
can't get enough of.

------
colindean
I own an affected model. The exchange program is seemingly not worth it. My
compensation offer was $295 if I purchased a Samsung replacement, $195 for
non-Samsung. I chose the "repair" because those amounts were approximately 25%
at best the cost of a suitable replacement. I have several dogs, so I do a lot
of laundry daily and need an expensive unit geared toward large families
because of it.

------
electic
I would argue this is far more serious than the phones that were recently
recalled:

> "The washing machine top can unexpectedly detach from the washing machine
> chassis during use, posing a risk of injury from impact," according to the
> Consumer Product Safety Commission.

How scary is that? This likely could cause death. You are talking about the
water, clothes, and the weight of the drum flying out and potentially hitting
you.

~~~
randyrand
If you watch the video the aftermath does not look like it would be life
threatening to be standing next to it. Could send you to the hospital though.

~~~
mrestko
If you read the article, in at least one instance someone ended up with a
broken jaw. That much force is definitely enough to kill someone, it would
just depend where they were hit and their baseline health. Imagine a child
standing next to the machine when it fell apart. Or an older person getting
hit in the head.

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mirekrusin
They should pivot to military contracts.

~~~
shahzeb
And building exotic buildings like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa#Development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa#Development)

------
Spooky23
Why does anyone buy fancy washers?

~~~
kw71
Using less water is what got me interested. When I bought it I was worried
about loading the septic drainfield with excess water and soap. Then I moved
to a city where water is very expensive. The energy to heat the water is a
concern too.

I found that compared to a normal American style top loading machine with
agitator, it takes better care of my clothing.

I happened to choose a machine that can spin at 1200 rpm, which is apparently
rather fast for a laundry machine. The electric dryer seems to work a lot
faster.

Now my machine is getting old, I had to repair the electronics once, and am
wondering when the gasket will tear and will I be able to find a replacement,
etc. I have had to repair top loaders more often but parts for these kinds of
machines seem to stay in the market for 30 years or more. That's probably not
going to be the case for this fancy import.

~~~
roseburg
Fancy dryers dry faster only because the fancy washer is spinning the clothes
faster at the end of the cycle. The technology inside clothes dryers hasn't
changed in 30 years, even in the fanciest models. Look up the parts, they
still use all the parts and design from models 30 years ago. It's actually
comical. Source: I repair dryers.

They haven't found a better way to convert electricity into heat, or a faster
way to use a flame to dry the clothes. Even old dryers had moisture sensors to
turn the machine off once it sensed the clothes were dry.

~~~
kw71
The computer brained dryer might be better at temperature regulation but
otherwise I see nothing that the mechanical timer-control and simple
electronics can't do.

~~~
roseburg
In the old mechanical brained dryers a simple set of thermostats regulated the
temperature. They can be purchased for $5 on ebay to replace if they act up. A
new computer brain? $100-$200

~~~
kw71
If it's available, that is! I know most appliance repair techs are not going
to go through this, but there are probably two components on the computer
control that I can not buy off the shelf. The SMPS transformer and the cpu
with masked firmware. The washingmachine had a third, the 3phase driver for
the big motor, which is off the market now.

I figured the simplest dryers just had a "one heater, or two in series, or two
in parallel" switch and a melting safety.

------
bcheung
Sounds like using an accelerometer to measure vibration and reduce spin speed
if vibration is too high might be a good addition to washing machines.

~~~
kw71
My made in 2004 LG frontloader has a simpler device for this. A ball bearing
rests in the path of an LED light. If it shakes, the ball moves, allowing the
light to shine on a phototransistor. The machine will slow down or stop and
toss the load around depending on how much trouble it is having.

------
debt
if they get really good at retrofitting their recalled shitty hardware then
maybe this'll just be something samsung owners should just expect going
forward.

i hope this doesn't happen in their heavy industries unit though. can you
recall ships that leak/sink.

------
ajharrison
Samsung: A symbol of quality™

