How much of an asshole is your washing machine/dryer?

Mine opens with the long press of a button.

But my beep gives me a different problem, I never hear it. Imagine a shy introvert whispering, "Excuse me, if it isn't any trouble, would you please kindly move your laundry?" From across the apartment behind several closed doors.

The end result is me nerotically checking it, and sometimes it just refused to end. Like the timer says some amount of time and nothing is happening. If I open it, the display sheepishly flashes CL, which I assume means clean and not clear.

The door locks are often wax motors, which extend pretty quick when heated but have to cool off to release. The re-lock sounds like a huge wtf. Couldn't they just limit the tumble rpm so they don't have to lock?

I ditched my front load petri dish for a 10 year old Speed Queen top loader off marketplace. No regerts.

I just bought new ones, to be delivered tomorrow.

So i hope they aren't much assholey yet.

Not very annoying at all. Does a little jingle when it's turned on. Door unlocks when finished, no beeps. Instantly unlocks when paused too. Even can integrate into Home Assistant, but the manufacturer (Fuck you Haier) made it worse for no real reason.

If you miss this sound, it will lock itself again 10-15 minutes later and rotate your clothes.

LOL, WTF. That machine is too "helpful" for its own good.

My previous washing machine, a Samsung front-loader, did not operate in an annoying way but was much more of an asshole by the fact that it was designed with blatant planned obsolescence. Shortly out of warranty, it failed catastrophically and I decided to take it apart to figure out why. Every metal part inside was in pristine condition, including all the ones exposed to water, except one. The "spider arm," which was what connected the rotating drum to its bearing, was so severely corroded that it literally broke into pieces:

(Note: not my picture, but mine looked the same.)

Samsung 100% used a corrosion-prone metal on that part on purpose.

Unfortunately, I had already replaced the machine at that point and I didn't take particular care when disassembling, so I wasn't prepared to replace the spider arm and scrapped it instead. At least I've still got the drive motor to use for some project, eventually. I sure as Hell won't buy a Samsung again, though!

(In fact, considering the DRM on their phones, ads on their smart TVs, and other enshittification of the rest of their products, I will never buy anything from Samsung ever again in my life, and I recommend that nobody else does either.)

My current washing machine is a Bosch front-loader that I bought used for very cheap. No idea how old it is in total, but I think I've probably had it for longer than the Samsung at this point and it has continued to work without problems.

Name and shame!

Friends don't let other people suffer the same fate.

Mine just throws a fit every decade or so, and stops generating heat.

Also, it's the most famous appliance in my house because a video on YouTube of me opening my dryer door has almost 500k views

I had a washing machine that made audible chirps as you dialed through the programs and an irritating ditty whenever you engaged a program. It couldn't be turned off. That was on a physical dial. But it also had flat touch buttons with no bevel or edge or tactile feedback - and these were always silent - so most of the time you didn't know if you'd really pressed it or not. God. The first time I used it I was like.. "what the fuck". It was brand new in 2023. I cannot comprehend how someone can design, make, and program something so stupid.

We have/had a combination machine from Whirlpool which we got in 2019. It was fairly cheap, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere €600 on a sale.

I've replaced the heater element twice. The shock absorbers twice, because as I was installing a new one the threads stripped immediately. I've replaced the drain pump once. Now it's been sitting unused for a month, rusting because the heater element has broken once again.

Good thing we've got a shared laundry room in our apartment complex!

Why don't they have proper ball-bearing bearings on the drum instead of just a bushing?

I had to replace mine last week. Okay, it's been a decade of zero maintenance, and the part only cost a tenner, but still - if this was a decent bearing it would be fine.

That sounds like a "sell it and make it someone else's problem" situation.

Lol my old Maytag is probably the most polite and introverted appliance in my house.

ours is im the basement (rental apartment), quiet but likes to eat socks, the damn thing. I think electric plug is just carmouflage, it runs on socks

mine is a few blocks away, and requires sacrifice of an always-increasing amount of coinage (literally every other trip costs more).

the dryer half does the same but also now takes twice as long to do its job--requiring even more coinage sacrifice.

they're also now scared of the dark (it isn't 24/7 like it used to be), meaning i can't go there at odd hours to avoid people.

Had an apartment with a washer that could wake up the dead. And of course, no alarm setting. Turns out, it was pretty easy to open the front plate and rip out the buzzer.

I have a Kenmore 80 Series washer and dryer set. There's a knob on the control panels to turn the buzzer off. It runs until it's finished. There is no lid lock, the washer is top-loading. The drum brake is a bit loud these days, should probably look into that. And it's probably about time to clean out the dryer's vent, the dull men's club will enjoy that.

I took the buzzer off my dryer immediately once I heard it the first time. I don't need that in my life. 10/10 would recommend to anyone that is even slightly annoyed with a laundry buzzer.

My old washer died about two weeks ago. It was a 30 year old Frigidaire that shorted something and made magic smoke. That was a pretty asshole move.

We replaced it with a Speed Queen and it's been great so far.

Name and shame my guy

My AEG has been running steadily for 15 years in my possession. It was used already when I got it. It’s a very simple one with no alarm, no display, not even a tiny one with a timer. Just a dial and a start button. The door sometimes needs an extra push to lock fully.

I mostly fight with AEG's auto dose, they have built it in a way where the gaskets only lasts a year before it starts dripping liquid detergent.

They gave me a replacement but now it's dripping again.

Liquid detergent with Auto dose is cool and all, but stick to powder if you want to save yourself some worry.

I learned my lesson the hard way too. After suffering, I bought the cheapest washer and dryer at the local appliance store, it has an end of cycle alarm that was a simple unplug in the back panel.

Washer is showing age, dryer is not. The worst issue is my hard water. Even copious amounts of bleach don't get my whites beyond gray dinge with it

My dryer is a Kenmore from the 80s. It is incredibly loud, and I have to push it back in place after every load. It has never broken, though.

Fuck modern appliances.
I'm lucky enough to have bought both washer/dryer almost 20 years ago. Both of 'em for $600 at Future Shop, which now ironically only exists in the past.

I never really think about these appliances, which is the nice part that I realky love about them.
They don't remind me they exist with beeps or phone notifications. They just do their thing.
Anyway, the washer is an old, cheap top loader, that can also periodically be used to tamp the soil beneath your foundation to make sure your house is stable. You activate that feature by bunching the bed sheets all wrong on the same side of the drum.
That's a nice feature that's been deprecated in newer models.
It's an overall easy model to repair because it's mostly just an oversized salad spinner with 2 water valves and a pump.
The dryer is like the quiet nephew that you like but never hear much about, nothing much to say really, but it works.

Anyway.
When the temperature dial on the washer broke 15 years ago, there was no way I was paying $90 to buy some complicated part that would break again.
So I just removed the knob and twisted the stranded wires to a dumb switch that you could reach by putting your finger in the knob hole as a proof of concept, left for the cold valve, right for hot. Sketchy? Sure. Warm? I don't know? Use a bit of both, or whatever.
I never even got around to actually solder it, which is weird because I've soldered lots of electronics. It worked, I guess I forgot, so whatever.

Until it stopped working a few months ago, having finally shaken itself loose and I opened it up again, only then realizing I didn't solder it way back then. Oops.
This time, I ordered a proper 3 position rotary switch, which I did solder. Left for the cold valve, right for the hot valve, and amazingly: middle for both, which is how warm water is made.
I also 3d printed a knob to fit the new switch.
Fancy right? but my last repair is still nowhere near as complicated as the original broken part was and we still only ever use the cold water setting.

Now, it turns out the reason the original part is complicated and expensive is that in normal washers, the temperature selection thingy only ever changes the washing temperature and not the rinsing temperature.
This means which valve needs to open has to change depending on where it is in the wash cycle, thus the more complicated part.

Anyway, technically, my washer now has more features than before it broke in the sense that we could theoretically now rinse with hot or warm water, which y'all plebs probably can't. Not that we ever use anything but the cold setting, but we could and you can't.

The dryer? It has just kept working.
Now and then we'd feed it something wrong like a bunch of loose balls from an old bearing that was sitting in a pant pocket or a set of lockpicks or whatever and I take the back panel apart to retrieve the stuff stuck in the back elbow somewhere. When that happens, I also vacuum the lint that is stuck in this quantum realm of not being caught in the lint filter, but also not expelled out, just caught in that same hungry void elbow.

Both have no music, no tunes, no beeps, no capacitive buttons that you don't quite know if you pressed or not, no lockout, although there's a safety switch that stops the drum from turning if you open the lid. No wifi, no app, no mold.
There's no soap dispenser, although I do have a peristaltic pump and tubing so I could easily enough just drop that in a jug of liquid detergent and time how much to use... but... we prefer powder detergent anyway because shipping water around is just dumb when I can get the same shit in concentrated powder and add water myself, which washing machines conveniently already do.
A bucket of the stuff lasts several years too.

They're old and all that, but these things keep on doing what they're made for while friends have gone through 3-4 sets in the same time line.

Fuck modern appliances.

the scale in this picture is so confusing

anyway my current washer & dryer are pretty good but ive had ones in the past that would have different behaviors like this...unlocking is always one of the more frustrating ones. A previous washing machine would also display a unitless number that counted down until it was done. It didn't seem to be time based because 18 didn't mean 18 minutes, it meant 18 more numbers until it was done.

Samsung front loader washing machine here.

It is generally musical while selecting program options. It sings a little song when finished, which is only after it unlocks the door. The little song only plays once. The little song can be changed to other tunes by subtle and undocumented button presses.

After about 10 minutes it plays a few notes while turning itself off that are easily recognisable as the notes it plays when it turns itself off, so if you miss the first little song, once you hear that you know it's definitely finished. After that it is done. No more door locking shenanigans or tumbling or clothes.

Generally I use the "sportswear" cycle which is about 1 hour, my clothes are generally not that dirty. Sometimes I treat towels / linen to a hot cotton cycle which is 2.5 hours and a 90 degree (Celsius) wash.

Had it for 10 years now, no mechanical or electrical issues. I always leave the door ajar when finished and once every few months I do a cleaning cycle.

I also have a Fisher and Paykel dryer. I have owned it for 8 years, in which time it has needed a replacement drive belt as it gets used heavily. The bushes on the drum need replacing soon, but I just turned it upside down so it will last for a while longer

Regarding your door issues, well that's because idiots try and open the door during a load, and then when it's locked, they turn it off and still try and open the door. They subsequently complain about the water going everywhere. Don't forget that manufacturers have to deal with the lowest common denominator end user.

Pretty sure the washer goes on the bottom

We have a front filter drain model. If draining is stuck you flip the flap open, and uncap the drain tube and lower it into a shallow container. Check the filter, and close the flap. I have had to do this 2-3 times in 5 years

If its at the end forever it might be because you are putting too much soap in.

Have you actually thought about the first point in your second list, the door? Imagine the machine is running and actually full of water, and turning it off releases the door. Would that really make you happy?

That said, your other points in that category are fair, and honestly incredibly weird. I never had a washer do any of that, but I assume it's to stop your clothes from wrinkling. Are you sure that can't be turned off?

Y'all have been to cheap with your washing machines.

Stop whining complaining and buy quality. It pays.