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Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
There you go jim, well done martin, cant believe its been in place since 2007!
Leaving parts in customers house will mean that these parts will almost certainly go to landfill which is wrong!
I dont doubt for a minute that you have had to scrap a sealed drum machine because you couldnt retrieve that lost bra wire, also i have had to scrap a machine because a bra wire went straight through the rear section of a splitable drum, the cost of rear tub, tub seal and labour was just too much for the customer, do you see my point, all sorts of repairs can become to costly to the customer.
The mindset of the customer has to be changed and the manufacturers need to think harder about the decisions they make and get the cost of parts prices reduced.
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http://www.kitchenkitsw.comRe: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
The simple answer is its a combination of all the things mentioned.
Pressure on cost by competition and customers, I know for a fact that Beko sent waves through the industry and all manufactures have felt the pressure from them selling machines in Europe at almost no profit to gain market share, then there is the Chinese crap.
Then when it comes to designing a new machine its very hard to justify from an engineering point of view, good engineers are constantly trying to reduce component count and bill of materials, the added costs of bolts and seal and assembly are going to be surprisingly high, it may only be a £5 but add this up across a line making 500 machines a day and its suddenly a lot of money.
you are going to see prises increase may be next year, Beko are going to start to increase price as they won’t want to be a budget brand for everI don’t believe for one moment welded tanks bearings fail sooner than split ones, what you may be seeing is more of them due to more of them being in low cost machines and customer do batter them, only last week I was arguing with a woman who’s bearing had failed in 14 months on a 6 kg machine. I turned up when it was on, it was loaded to the top, no room for sheet of paper, and she told me its on 5 times a day at least, and she was still arguing its gone early.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
DrDill wrote:The reason for my post is that unless the bearings fail it doesn’t matter whether the drum is sealed or not. The OP is suggesting that machines with sealed drums will have early bearing failure and then be BER, i dont think that is true at all. So to advise anyone not to buy a sealed drum machine would not be right at all.
As a matter of fact, bearings are not the only problems with sealed drums. I went to a 3 day old Bosch washer the other day with a two pence piece peering through a hole on the front end of the base. Unfortunately, the drum was a sealed unit and therefore couldn’t be repaired.
Nowadays, reuse takes precedence over recycling, and sealed drums are making a mockery of this endeavour.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
The problem isnt just the sealed drum, its the cost, if it was only £60 to buy the repair would be good.
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http://www.kitchenkitsw.comRe: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
madangler1 wrote:I don’t believe for one moment welded tanks bearings fail sooner than split ones, what you may be seeing is more of them due to more of them being in low cost machines and customer do batter them, only last week I was arguing with a woman who’s bearing had failed in 14 months on a 6 kg machine. I turned up when it was on, it was loaded to the top, no room for sheet of paper, and she told me its on 5 times a day at least, and she was still arguing its gone early.
That is very typical from what I see.
People expect machines to last XX years irrespective of how often or how they are used (and often abused) and not XX hours or cycles, which is how they are designed if any thought it given to durability at all.
Factor in exactly the above, overloading, higher spin speeds, lots of improper use as well as the cost engineered cheaper products and it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.
I totally get that people in general likely won’t know, don’t care or don’t understand these things but it is nonetheless frustrating having to explain all this over and over again, usually amid a tirade of abuse interspersed with threats of legal action, Watchdog and whatever else. :rolls:
It’s frustrating because, all that unpleasantness could be easily avoided.
K.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
kwatt, so on that basis, would you agree with me that it’s ironic that such institutes like Which? and Watchdog are on one hand telling folk to go for cheapest prices, whilst also campaigning for improved quality of appliances? Because that’s how it seems to me, that the same institutions and organizations are the one fueling this whole ‘problem’ which they are trying to stop.
TBH I cannot see a time when the quality will ever improve. I think it’s gone too far now.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
In some measure perhaps but I suspect probably not quite knowing or realising the effect that may result.
To be fair, Which? do try to weed this stuff out but, even for them, it is difficult to ascertain thee things at times and often impossible to test durability over an extended period.
Same with the BBC as well as others.
I have helped both with stuff over the years and they are as diligent as they can be in research however they face the same problem we do, people often read what they want to read and not the whole story. So, often complex or more convoluted information gets condensed into dumbed down soundbites.
The typical example is the simple “average use” thing that is applied to washing machines.
The average household in the UK consists of 2.5 people. The average number of washes per annum is 250-270 depending on who’s figures you use. So, it’s “reasonable” to assume that on average one person will use little over 100 wash loads per year, depending on circumstance obviously but, it’s a reasonable and logical number backed by a lot of research.
Yet I come across (frequently) families of four, five and more that tell me I’m wrong and that they only do an “average” number of washes and that the machine should have lasted XX years longer. With not a shred of evidence to back that position up and all the evidence points in completely the opposite direction.
But you can bet that the same families won’t buy a Mini as their main family car as, it isn’t big enough and not designed for that purpose.
With sealed tanks as well as normal ones fitted to the bulk of machines on the market you will ordinarily find that the lower end is designed for 600-1500 cycles or hours of use. Midrange about 2000-3000, maybe. It isn’t rocket science to work out that a lot of them will not see a second birthday and, if the bearings do fail the initial buy-in price so low as to make it more economical to replace rather than repair.
Happy retailers, they just sold another white box.
Happy manufacturer showing increased sales.
Unhappy customer that feels cheated and ripped off. Who will all too often move to another brand in the same price bracket, failing to learn the lesson, only to see a repeat performance.
There is a combination of things at work here and, it isn’t just one party that can be blamed, all have a part in where we are now.
Trying to explain that to a lot of people that have a busted appliance and feel that they’ve been somehow cheated, nigh on impossible.
The largest problem being that a lot of this isn’t transparent and in an easily digestible format that people can base a buying decision on and, since Which? etc can’t test for durability, combined with manufacturers electing not to publish that information, a really bad one for the public in this regard.
To my knowledge only ISE and Miele publish any sort of figures on lifespan or hours/cycles of use. That speaks volumes about the industry.
K.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
In a nutshell, you get what you paid for!
30 years ago my mum bought a Zanussi washer for £289, cant remember model but it had the drop down door. Our houshold had 6 of us in, and my dad ran a football team and the kit was washed in it, lasted 22 years, i changed bearings after 10 years and a door seal.
Why do consumers think that a machine costing less than the cost of that machine will last any reasonable length if time?, sealed drum or not. The true cost of a decent machine these days is around £1000, and guess what ISE and Miele fall in that price and guess what they are decent machines. I dont think either of these machines would last a shorter length of time if they had a sealed drum.
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http://www.kitchenkitsw.comRe: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
Agreed… But, the quality of the components for that sealed drum would denote the lifespan… Notwithstanding this, the problem of coin damage and trapped items could still render a drum useless if sealed.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
Very true George.
But we’re also seeing them creep into more premium machines as, as we know but the public don’t, a lot of the mechanical elements remain common across certain group brands, like the Indesit/Hotpoint which appear to share platforms in much the same way as cars do.
Sure, the skin they wrap them in and the features, functions and control panels might change but, fundamentally, they are often of very similar heritage.
That starts to make (for example) even a three year old Hotpoint Aqualtis which is regarded as a premium machine, with a sealed tank and a bearing failure or something stuck in it, uneconomical to either repair or recondition.
So it’s value is zero and the best you can hope for it so recondition it in some ethical fashion.
K.
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
Or get the price of major parts reduced, a sealed drum must come under the guise of a service part now.
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http://www.kitchenkitsw.comRe: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
There isn’t one single person in the white goods trade that hasn’t heard the much coined phrase….. ” I don’t want a fancy machine with dozens of programmes, I only use two anyway, so I just want a basic washing machine, that’s all!” In essence that has only ever been the basic remit of the average consumer. They were’nt the ones demanding faster spin speeds, larger loads, faster wash cycles, the manufacturers in competition with one another created that situation. Historically the automatic washing machine has today morphed into what the industry has created rather than what the public has demanded. Manufacturers have fallen over themselves in all out war for their slice of the cake. Adding more and more features, bells and whistles to attract the punter into buying. They didn’t ask for it, they really didn’t, instead aggressive marketing forces were at work luring them into buying this stuff. The industry created what you see today as a white box on your computer screen, in stock, buy now delivered tomorrow. (Not available in your High St. at these fantastic on-line prices by the way)
Quite how today’s punter could or would possibly ever demand a better product these days is impossible to fathom. That even now the junk they are buying is set to rise in price even higher which, will no doubt force manufacturers to build even cheaper. A downward spiralling black hole that only ‘technology’ created. Meanwhile the punter of today is no more demanding than they were 30 plus years ago in that all they really want is a washer to do just two programmes twice a day for their 2.4 lot!
Re: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
Sort of agree to parts of that martin, but you have missed out the fact that governments and eco policies have forced manufacturers to do some things
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http://www.kitchenkitsw.comRe: List of washers with sealed/welded tubs
DrDill wrote:you have missed out the fact that governments and eco policies have forced manufacturers to do some things
…..and in so doing has compounded the problem even further….!!!
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