Posted on 05/31/2006 3:41:13 PM PDT by SJackson
Fellow Iowan, born in Laurens and grew up in Gilbert (north of Ames).
I worked with friends from Newton in the 60's and at that time Fred Maytag (I may be wrong on his first name) was a highly respected person by just about everyone.
My friends used to sneak into his swimming pool late at night.
My wife and I live in Iowa and bought a Maytag washer and dryer. Biggest piece of sh*t. Mechanic has been out once since we bought it. When the washer spins out, you can hear it outside!!
I'm sorry to see people lose jobs, but the market works when you sell cr*p. Our first set of Hotpoint W&D lasted 12 years!!!
I have whirlpool and at my house I am the repairman. The dryer is simple enough; I've replaced the belt, the little wheels the drum rides on, the door switch, and there was a point on a wire that fused open underneath a bit of tape; and resealed the fan duct with foam tape. I've replaced the pump on the washer.
The founders of these once-great companies were true businessmen who cared about quality. Nowadays these companies are mostly cash cows for CEOs who use them to line their golden parachutes with. But I still have hope. If enough people get fed up with cheap junk, consumer demand will make them either go out of business or force them to start making quality products again. I hate to say this, but American manufactureres could take a lesson from the way the Japanese do things. For the Japenese, quality is still Job 1.
management kept bringing in geniuses who knew nothing about laundry ...
DINGDINGDINGDING WINNER!!!!!!!1
You hit the nail on the damn head!!! Appliances are NOT designed by housewives, bachelors, kids at home alone after school. All I ever use is one cycle and one size load anyway. And whatever happened to something lasting 20 years?!?!?! We used to be able to keep our cars and trucks going down the road for 20 years. Now your lucky if it lasts till the end of the loan!!!!!
Exactly correct! In 1998 we bought all new Maytag appliances, Washer, Dryer, Refrigerator, Stove and Dishwasher. What a mistake, true junk one and all.
I look forward to reading a study of how Maytag, an American icon of the highest quality was destroyed. It must have taken real effort on someone's part to make it happen.
As for appliances, they're pricey (even compared to Maytag pricing levels), but KitchenAid seems to be picking up a lot of the slack..
as for cars, its a pain to do sometimes, but my 86 Caprice still runs like a top (looks like hell though), only just had to replace the carburetor at 217k. The Cutlass is an 83, with about 250k, iks been through a few motors on the way to being modded out the hilt, but its very dependable, and easy for me to maintain for the most part. My wife's 96 Ciera, OTOH, I wouldn't think of doing much anything to it myself....
And my 1984 Whirlpool washer and dryer, other than one drive belt and one lint filter would attest to that.
A friend of mine has a Philco refrigerator from the early 1950's. It works fine.
Does anybody know where the Maytags are made or assembled?
What failure? Maytag didn't go belly-up, they were bought out by their largest competitor. Company A buys Company B and thousands of employees take it in the shorts. The great American success story. I doubt that Whirlpool would have bought them had they been a money losing proposition. And Whirlpool's U.S. manufacturing employees are just as unionized as Maytag's were. And Maytag had been moving production overseas just as fast as Whirlpool has.
Depends. Newton had been one of their larger manufacturing plants for washers and dryers. Some of their stuff is made in the states but a lot of the production had been moved overseas, especially the lower end products. Whirlpool is no different.
I have whirlpool and at my house I am the repairman. The dryer is simple enough; I've replaced the belt, the little wheels the drum rides on, the door switch, and there was a point on a wire that fused open underneath a bit of tape; and resealed the fan duct with foam tape. I've replaced the pump on the washer.
***
It's good that you are so handy. My late father was. He was the official neighborhood repairman. If something broke, the word was to call John. I asked him once to teach me some simple repairs, but he didn't. Unfortunately, he somehow felt he would always be around to help his little girl. I miss him terribly.
True of most appliances and other products as well. The companies no longer make them to last -- if they last too long, you're not apt to buy a new one, and if you don't buy, the companies don't make money. And there aren't a whole lot of choices in that maybe three or four or five corporations own numerous brand names. So if you buy one brand and you don't like it, the next brand you buy might not be any better because it too is made by the same corporation. There just aren't a whole lot of choices out there.
As for Kenmore appliances, there was a time when they too lasted forever. My parents owned nothing but Sears or Kenmore appliances, televisions, lawnmowers and the like, and most of them were around 30 or more years. In fact, my brother still has an old Sears deep freezer that was my mother's, originally purchased in 1957. It's not frost-free, but it's huge and it still freezes. The Kenmore or Sears brands were made by the usual manufacturers -- you could put them side-by-side with the manufacturer's regular brand and not be able to tell the difference, except if you looked at the price tag. But as the major manufacturers have started to make their products on the cheap, the private label brands such as Sears/Kenmore are also cheap.
I too have enjoyed many good products from Sears. A big key for me was that I always knew where to go to get parts and knew the service was reliable if I needed it.
That's another problem now with Sears products, at least in my neck of the woods -- lack of service and parts. Some years ago, my dad needed a part for Mom's IKenmore dryer, went to the Sears part distribution place and was told that they no longer had parts for that old dryer -- they only carried parts for appliances in use five years or less -- anything older than that, you were outta luck.
Fortunately, there were several stores around here called All Appliance Parts. The title said it all -- they had parts for just about every make and model of appliance and not just for the new or relatively new. My dad drove out to the store near his home, took the old part with him, along with the make, model and serial number. Dad just barely walked into the front door with the old part and uttered "I need a ____" and before he could get out what he needed, the guy behind the counter said, "I got it right here." My dad was incredulous -- he asked, "don't you need to look at the serial number or ...." and the guy said, "No. This is what you need." And sure enough, Dad bought the part, brought it home, installed it and the appliance worked again.
Unfortunately, I think All Appliance Parts is out of business now...at least the store near us is gone. We live in a throwaway society now, so repairs shops and parts distributors can't stay in business anymore.
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