as an appliance salesperson at a well-known home-improvement retailer, i do just about whatever i can to stop people from buying Samsung appliances. They’re garbage. They overstuff their appliances with way too much unnecessary tech that nobody wants, and in order to keep the costs from being astronomical, they cut on build quality. Countless customers come in to replace Samsung appliances that failed far before their expected lifespan, often breaking within the first few years.
you want reliable? go with LG or GE. Whirlpool is also pretty decent.
oh, i also suggest Electrolux. they’re great. i especially like to offer their laundry machines as an alternative to the more complicated LGs. electrolux machines are very simple, and they have great warranties.
Bosch is overpriced. nice, but far too expensive here.
LG all the way. I have not had much in the way of positive results from GE since their acquisition by Haier. Their build quality took an immediate and noticeable nosedive. I have seen DOA, damaged, and defective units of all stripes from all brands over the years. But I have never seen any units arrive from the factory not fully assembled, but still packed up in a box and shipped in that state, except from GE. Multiple times.
I received a PFE28 refrigerator with no ice maker mechanism, just a hole in the door where it should have been installed. I also received a CGS700 range with the oven light door switch not installed, just rolling around in the bottom of the oven cavity where it was subsequently baked by the customer. I also received one CXE22 refrigerator with no face panel on the center drawer. There are other examples but those are just the recent ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Haier’s management philosophy seems to be in lockstep with the Chinese Manufacturing Way, which is to steal whatever tech you can, do a slapdash job of making it, lie about everything, and when pressed about it just lie some more.
Honestly Whirlpool is not doing great these days, either, but they’re better than Samsung or GE. Whirlpool has seemingly devolved into mostly competing with itself with all of its various sub-marquees: Amana, Maytag, KitchenAid, Gladiator, Jenn-Air, Roper, Affresh, etc. A better strategy might be to compete with their, you know, competitors. Whirlpool’s warranty service network has also essentially evaporated over the last few years, so if you don’t already know a repairman who is Whirlpool factory authorized to do warranty work you may as well just open a Youtube tab and figure that shit out yourself. Otherwise you’ll just be told “there are no servicers or service dates in your area and the system only lets us look two weeks in advance” over and over again until your warranty runs out.
The less we say about Samsung the better. At one point we were experiencing a roughly 50/50 first-week failure rate of their laundry machines and dishwashers. A coin flip. That’s worse odds than a first run XBox 360 not red ringing itself to put it into perspective. Don’t buy a Samsung appliance no matter how shiny it is or how big of a touch screen it’s got.
Although GE has delivered one or two problematic appliances, overall the customers I’ve had have had pretty great experiences with them, especially since higher bought majority share from them. Overall, I haven’t heard any complaints aside from teeny weenie ones. But I’ll keep My ears open.
While I’m sure they’re cutting build quality to make them cheaper, the “unnecessary tech” isn’t some cutting edge high tech stuff requiring high R&D costs that would make them “astronomically expensive”
If they wanted to they could literally replicate everything they’re doing with a 60$ raspberry pi and just interface it with the existing controller boards and call it a day.
Even this article about the fridge is just an (admittedly fairly large screen) tablet.
The Samsung FamilyHub fridge does indeed basically have an overgrown tablet duct taped to the door. It runs Samsung’s Tizen operating system, which you may recall was at one point going to be the Next Big Thing and a competitor to Android and iOS. Obviously that didn’t happen, so now it’s relegated to refrigerators.
Honestly, my theory is that Samsung is just pulling a sunk cost fallacy move and was desperate to put Tizen in something – anything – to justify its development.
It’s terrible. All the hardware is also located inside the upper right door, and it dumps all of its waste heat out the back of the door into the refrigerator compartment. The design is breathtakingly stupid.
And here I thought their shitty TVs were breathtakingly stupid and over complicated (seriously there are like 6 different fucking menu screens in different places, and best of luck remembering which one you need for something stupid simple like sleep timer…)
Then again, I’ve been avoiding Samsung since the tv incident 10 years ago… apparently for the best…
When their refrigerators have AI that scans everything you put into the refrigerator and then makes suggestions to you without asking first and table screen that hardly work and go obsolete in a year, yeah, I call that unnecessary tech. No other refrigerator does that.
That’s not unnecessary, just to you it is, and the execution is flawed and terrible (No consent, hardly working screen) I for one would love a feature that kept track of my groceries for me because I’m absolutely terrible at manual lists and such.
Just because “no other refrigerator does that” doesn’t automatically make it unnecessary either. That’s what innovation is supposed to be.
Going to have to disagree based on personal experience (which admittedly has limited value). Bought LG washer, dryer, and fridge when we moved. The washer blew the clutch seal after about 4 and a half years. The dryer sensor is unreliable (leading to taking jeans or blankets out, them still being damp, and having to put them back in on a timer). And the fridge compressor sounds like it’s struggling.
The most absurd part is that we replaced the washer with a similar LG model (one with an agitator - I looked into just replacing the part but it was half the price of the washer, the underside of the impeller was moldy because lack of water flow, something no amount of tub clean cycles will fix, and the outer bucket was absolutely disgusting from the leak, with no easy way to hose it out) because everything else was either crap, ridiculously expensive, or both.
I have an anecdote that says the opposite. I got the same fridge, washer, and dryer from LG when we moved in our house 10 years ago and have had no problems with any one of them. My wife hates that we got a model with the freezer as a drawer on the bottom and would have preferred a side by side but no problems with anything breaking.
Our Bosch dishwasher on the other hand had a gasket start leaking during the pandemic and it took the repair people 4 or 5 months to get a replacement in. I think they were redesigning a faulty part at the same time as all the supply chain issues so we had a really bad time with that. It was only a couple years old at the time and has worked ever since.
Well I’m glad to hear you had a better experience than I did. I have my fingers crossed that everything holds up on this end, and the washer was a freak occurrence.
Yeah, we bought a new LG washer and dryer set when we moved to this house in late 2016. The washer has been trouble free. In fact, it actually saved us from washing delicate clothes in hot water (the handles on the spigots are reversed - the blue is hot; the red is cold) - it filled up, recognized there was a problem, and drained without doing anything more. I thought there was an issue with the washer at first, but then I realized how warm it was inside the washer, and I figured it out from there. I don’t think it’s technically a smart washer in the current sense (there’s no app or anything), but it’s definitely smarter than the ones I’ve had before.
The dryer’s tension pulley failed, so I had to replace that, for ~$20 from Amazon. It was making noise for a long time, but like a dolt I waited until it actually failed to replace it. The replacement has been trouble free. I found a video on Youtube from someone that showed how to disassemble it to get to the part - it’s easier than it looks.
I’m constantly replacing the drain pump in my LG washer. When a replacement part has thousands of reviews on amazon, you know the brand has to know their parts are crap and either doesn’t care or wanted it that way. They’re on my never buy list now.
What do you define as “constantly”? Once a year, every two years, twice in 20 years?
Anecdotal, but I’ve had my lg washer, dryer, dishwasher, fridge, and gas stove for about 10 years and none of them have had any issues at all. I didn’t get them because I was super into LG, they were cheap - open box, dented, or floor model - and it just worked out that way, but still, zero issues with any of it.
Maybe it’s just that model tho, and that’s legit. Sometimes there’s just a shit offering, but the rest of the line is decent.
But a lot of times, parts fit multiple brand’s machines, or multiple models within the same brand. Especially something like a drain pump, which is super basic and could be used in dishwashers as well as literally all of their brand washers, for example. Solid chance the reason for the large number of reviews is compatibility with other models rather than lg sucking that hard for that model. But without knowing the exact part I can’t say.
There’s a combination of flaws. The strainer basket doesn’t do a very good job keeping debris out of the impeller. There’s little separation between the steainer and the impeller. So long hairs that are partially caught in the strainer can still wrap around the impeller.
The pump itself has a terrible impeller design. The impeller is nylon and is press fit onto a 1/8 brass rod that just has a flat ground on it, no knurling or splines. The nylon cracks easily and ends up free spinning.
They use the same pump in loads of washer models. So yes, there’s a very large user base, but that’s a lot of people with part failures. The pump is garbage and lg should not be using it.
That’s a legitimate complaint, but if you bought it within the last 5 years or whatever, it’s possible they saw error and changed, assuming that’s the same part they used.
Or maybe, and I find this much more likely, the one you got on Amazon was disguised trash like everything else from Amazon and it’s not actually the OEM parts causing the issue since it’s always the same shitty part that fails. You got unlucky with the oem part, then bought trash on Amazon (basically everything on Amazon is knockoff, nothing is quality) and have been replacing it since.
If you bought the replacement pump from an OEM part supplier or other official supplier for replacements, and continued to have the issue, sure, but at this point you are giving an extended Amazon review as a review of the machine itself. And that’s not remotely fair to the unit, because Amazon is trash and won’t even let you post negative reviews anymore (try it, good luck).
4 pump impeller failures in 5 years. 1 time a mask strap got past the strainer. I’ll take the blame on that, but the other 3 were just long hair and bad design/materials choices.
I was with you until you suggested GE. GE is the Chrysler of appliances (ie squeeze suppliers on price so much that they get precisely what they ask for). It’s the monkey’s paw effect.
This was especially true until 2016 when Haier bought a majority share in the appliances division of GE. After then, the quality has seriously improved, and so has their customer service. The customer I’ve had so far have definitely liked them and not had any problems with them at all.
as an appliance salesperson at a well-known home-improvement retailer, i do just about whatever i can to stop people from buying Samsung appliances. They’re garbage. They overstuff their appliances with way too much unnecessary tech that nobody wants, and in order to keep the costs from being astronomical, they cut on build quality. Countless customers come in to replace Samsung appliances that failed far before their expected lifespan, often breaking within the first few years.
you want reliable? go with LG or GE. Whirlpool is also pretty decent.
European here, I suggest Bosch or Electrolux, if that’s available in your part of the world.
Oh my God Bosch does good on their motors. Annoyingly one of those you pay for what you get companies.
oh, i also suggest Electrolux. they’re great. i especially like to offer their laundry machines as an alternative to the more complicated LGs. electrolux machines are very simple, and they have great warranties.
Bosch is overpriced. nice, but far too expensive here.
Yeah, why would you buy kitchen appliances from a Smartphone/TV vendor?
Isn’t LG having issues with their linear compressors?
Have they? I’d like to hear some more information about that, especially if you have any links.
Ohoho man
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/consumer/fridge-failures-federal-lawsuit-cites-lg-refrigerator-issue/3552575/
https://www.wrtv.com/news/wrtv-investigates/indiana-consumers-join-class-action-lawsuit-against-lg-over-faulty-fridges
https://www.consumerreports.org/lawsuits-settlements/lg-settles-class-action-lawsuit-over-refrigerator-compressors/
LG is also being shitty about it, claiming everyone agreed to arbitration by reading it on the box.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/consumer/lg-refrigerators-failures-update/3465620/
LG all the way. I have not had much in the way of positive results from GE since their acquisition by Haier. Their build quality took an immediate and noticeable nosedive. I have seen DOA, damaged, and defective units of all stripes from all brands over the years. But I have never seen any units arrive from the factory not fully assembled, but still packed up in a box and shipped in that state, except from GE. Multiple times.
I received a PFE28 refrigerator with no ice maker mechanism, just a hole in the door where it should have been installed. I also received a CGS700 range with the oven light door switch not installed, just rolling around in the bottom of the oven cavity where it was subsequently baked by the customer. I also received one CXE22 refrigerator with no face panel on the center drawer. There are other examples but those are just the recent ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Haier’s management philosophy seems to be in lockstep with the Chinese Manufacturing Way, which is to steal whatever tech you can, do a slapdash job of making it, lie about everything, and when pressed about it just lie some more.
Honestly Whirlpool is not doing great these days, either, but they’re better than Samsung or GE. Whirlpool has seemingly devolved into mostly competing with itself with all of its various sub-marquees: Amana, Maytag, KitchenAid, Gladiator, Jenn-Air, Roper, Affresh, etc. A better strategy might be to compete with their, you know, competitors. Whirlpool’s warranty service network has also essentially evaporated over the last few years, so if you don’t already know a repairman who is Whirlpool factory authorized to do warranty work you may as well just open a Youtube tab and figure that shit out yourself. Otherwise you’ll just be told “there are no servicers or service dates in your area and the system only lets us look two weeks in advance” over and over again until your warranty runs out.
The less we say about Samsung the better. At one point we were experiencing a roughly 50/50 first-week failure rate of their laundry machines and dishwashers. A coin flip. That’s worse odds than a first run XBox 360 not red ringing itself to put it into perspective. Don’t buy a Samsung appliance no matter how shiny it is or how big of a touch screen it’s got.
Although GE has delivered one or two problematic appliances, overall the customers I’ve had have had pretty great experiences with them, especially since higher bought majority share from them. Overall, I haven’t heard any complaints aside from teeny weenie ones. But I’ll keep My ears open.
While I’m sure they’re cutting build quality to make them cheaper, the “unnecessary tech” isn’t some cutting edge high tech stuff requiring high R&D costs that would make them “astronomically expensive”
If they wanted to they could literally replicate everything they’re doing with a 60$ raspberry pi and just interface it with the existing controller boards and call it a day.
Even this article about the fridge is just an (admittedly fairly large screen) tablet.
The Samsung FamilyHub fridge does indeed basically have an overgrown tablet duct taped to the door. It runs Samsung’s Tizen operating system, which you may recall was at one point going to be the Next Big Thing and a competitor to Android and iOS. Obviously that didn’t happen, so now it’s relegated to refrigerators.
Honestly, my theory is that Samsung is just pulling a sunk cost fallacy move and was desperate to put Tizen in something – anything – to justify its development.
It’s terrible. All the hardware is also located inside the upper right door, and it dumps all of its waste heat out the back of the door into the refrigerator compartment. The design is breathtakingly stupid.
And here I thought their shitty TVs were breathtakingly stupid and over complicated (seriously there are like 6 different fucking menu screens in different places, and best of luck remembering which one you need for something stupid simple like sleep timer…)
Then again, I’ve been avoiding Samsung since the tv incident 10 years ago… apparently for the best…
When their refrigerators have AI that scans everything you put into the refrigerator and then makes suggestions to you without asking first and table screen that hardly work and go obsolete in a year, yeah, I call that unnecessary tech. No other refrigerator does that.
That’s not unnecessary, just to you it is, and the execution is flawed and terrible (No consent, hardly working screen) I for one would love a feature that kept track of my groceries for me because I’m absolutely terrible at manual lists and such.
Just because “no other refrigerator does that” doesn’t automatically make it unnecessary either. That’s what innovation is supposed to be.
Going to have to disagree based on personal experience (which admittedly has limited value). Bought LG washer, dryer, and fridge when we moved. The washer blew the clutch seal after about 4 and a half years. The dryer sensor is unreliable (leading to taking jeans or blankets out, them still being damp, and having to put them back in on a timer). And the fridge compressor sounds like it’s struggling.
The most absurd part is that we replaced the washer with a similar LG model (one with an agitator - I looked into just replacing the part but it was half the price of the washer, the underside of the impeller was moldy because lack of water flow, something no amount of tub clean cycles will fix, and the outer bucket was absolutely disgusting from the leak, with no easy way to hose it out) because everything else was either crap, ridiculously expensive, or both.
I hate this timeline.
I have an anecdote that says the opposite. I got the same fridge, washer, and dryer from LG when we moved in our house 10 years ago and have had no problems with any one of them. My wife hates that we got a model with the freezer as a drawer on the bottom and would have preferred a side by side but no problems with anything breaking.
Our Bosch dishwasher on the other hand had a gasket start leaking during the pandemic and it took the repair people 4 or 5 months to get a replacement in. I think they were redesigning a faulty part at the same time as all the supply chain issues so we had a really bad time with that. It was only a couple years old at the time and has worked ever since.
Well I’m glad to hear you had a better experience than I did. I have my fingers crossed that everything holds up on this end, and the washer was a freak occurrence.
I have an anecdote where my LG washer has been running fine for 10 years.
Yeah, we bought a new LG washer and dryer set when we moved to this house in late 2016. The washer has been trouble free. In fact, it actually saved us from washing delicate clothes in hot water (the handles on the spigots are reversed - the blue is hot; the red is cold) - it filled up, recognized there was a problem, and drained without doing anything more. I thought there was an issue with the washer at first, but then I realized how warm it was inside the washer, and I figured it out from there. I don’t think it’s technically a smart washer in the current sense (there’s no app or anything), but it’s definitely smarter than the ones I’ve had before.
The dryer’s tension pulley failed, so I had to replace that, for ~$20 from Amazon. It was making noise for a long time, but like a dolt I waited until it actually failed to replace it. The replacement has been trouble free. I found a video on Youtube from someone that showed how to disassemble it to get to the part - it’s easier than it looks.
Jeans in the dryer? They’ll definitely shrink that way.
I’m constantly replacing the drain pump in my LG washer. When a replacement part has thousands of reviews on amazon, you know the brand has to know their parts are crap and either doesn’t care or wanted it that way. They’re on my never buy list now.
What do you define as “constantly”? Once a year, every two years, twice in 20 years?
Anecdotal, but I’ve had my lg washer, dryer, dishwasher, fridge, and gas stove for about 10 years and none of them have had any issues at all. I didn’t get them because I was super into LG, they were cheap - open box, dented, or floor model - and it just worked out that way, but still, zero issues with any of it.
Maybe it’s just that model tho, and that’s legit. Sometimes there’s just a shit offering, but the rest of the line is decent.
But a lot of times, parts fit multiple brand’s machines, or multiple models within the same brand. Especially something like a drain pump, which is super basic and could be used in dishwashers as well as literally all of their brand washers, for example. Solid chance the reason for the large number of reviews is compatibility with other models rather than lg sucking that hard for that model. But without knowing the exact part I can’t say.
4 times in the last 5 years.
There’s a combination of flaws. The strainer basket doesn’t do a very good job keeping debris out of the impeller. There’s little separation between the steainer and the impeller. So long hairs that are partially caught in the strainer can still wrap around the impeller.
The pump itself has a terrible impeller design. The impeller is nylon and is press fit onto a 1/8 brass rod that just has a flat ground on it, no knurling or splines. The nylon cracks easily and ends up free spinning.
They use the same pump in loads of washer models. So yes, there’s a very large user base, but that’s a lot of people with part failures. The pump is garbage and lg should not be using it.
That’s a legitimate complaint, but if you bought it within the last 5 years or whatever, it’s possible they saw error and changed, assuming that’s the same part they used.
Or maybe, and I find this much more likely, the one you got on Amazon was disguised trash like everything else from Amazon and it’s not actually the OEM parts causing the issue since it’s always the same shitty part that fails. You got unlucky with the oem part, then bought trash on Amazon (basically everything on Amazon is knockoff, nothing is quality) and have been replacing it since.
If you bought the replacement pump from an OEM part supplier or other official supplier for replacements, and continued to have the issue, sure, but at this point you are giving an extended Amazon review as a review of the machine itself. And that’s not remotely fair to the unit, because Amazon is trash and won’t even let you post negative reviews anymore (try it, good luck).
How old is this appliance? And what do you mean by constantly?
4 pump impeller failures in 5 years. 1 time a mask strap got past the strainer. I’ll take the blame on that, but the other 3 were just long hair and bad design/materials choices.
I was with you until you suggested GE. GE is the Chrysler of appliances (ie squeeze suppliers on price so much that they get precisely what they ask for). It’s the monkey’s paw effect.
This was especially true until 2016 when Haier bought a majority share in the appliances division of GE. After then, the quality has seriously improved, and so has their customer service. The customer I’ve had so far have definitely liked them and not had any problems with them at all.
Smeg for fridges