Into the abyss? Bought Maytag Neptune Washer & Dryer

The other day our faithful washing machine finally died – it started draining the fill water on the floor. Since we had gotten it for free, and it was at least 30 years old, we decided it was better to buy new than to fix the old.

After looking around a bit, we decided on the Maytag Neptune series. Admittedly, we made our choice in a bit of a hurry – living without a washing machine isn’t really living – and we might have been better off looking a bit longer. It seems that the neptunes that were sold 4–5 years ago had more than a few problems, and Maytag was sufficiently incompetent in solving them to drive some lawyers to file a class action lawsuit. But I discovered all of this while waiting for the delivery ;-)

Anyway, Appliance World delivered them at about 6pm. It would have been nice to know it was going to be so late so I wouldn’t have wasted a day waiting for them, but they didn’t lie about when they’d arrive. Still, if I was running a business where my customers had to wait at home for me to show up, I would be investing a lot in whatever technology would allow me tell them precisely when I would be arriving. If I ordered appliances from a store that told me they’d be there at 3:15 and they were there at 3:15, they’d have to screw up the rest of it pretty bad before I wouldn’t order from them again. But I digress.

The new machines are, so far, pretty awesome. The washer is so quiet it’s very hard to tell if it’s running at all. Even when it’s spinning things dry (at 900 RPM) it’s still so quiet we can’t hear it upstairs. The dryer is the same way. Test loads are so far coming out nice and clean, and the dryer is pretty speedy as well. We got the pedestals for the units to sit on, both for the storage (they each have a large drawer) and for the height. They were expensive, but after changing the laundry only a few times I can see that not having to bend over to load & unload makes them worth every penny.

So, if Maytag has fixed their issues, and the control board & motor don’t blow up and the inside doesn’t reek of mold in a year or so, we’ll have made a good choice.