The question I am most often asked is “Which brand or washer and dryer would you recommend?”. My answer often surprises people because it is one of the most affordable brands on the market.
Before I answer that, let’s deal with a false assumption that the big manufacturers have instilled in their clients. Which is, that because you pay more for an appliance it is going to last longer. This is absolutely wrong, in fact, in my opinion and experience, the reverse is true.
Here is the logic behind that statement. When you engineer anything, every part used on it is a possible point of failure. If you have only 20 parts on a washer, you only have 20 possible parts to diagnose and only 20 places it can possibly go bad.
If you have 350 parts on a washer, now you have 350 parts to diagnose and 350 places it can possibly go bad. Furthermore, if a technician has to repair this machine, the first one can be done in a reasonable and affordable amount of time.
The machine with 350 parts will take a crazy amount of time to diagnose and this is an expense that is usually passed on to the client. Furthermore, the appliances with the greatest amount of bells and whistles on them, which are usually the most expensive, are the ones that break down the soonest. They are also the most expensive to repair, if they can be repaired at all.
For example, I was recently called out to Wild Dunes on the Isle Of Palms to look at a really expensive SubZero refrigerator which was only 4 years old. It was really a nice unit, it’s doors were customized so that it matched the cabinets in the kitchen. The client told me he had spent well over 5 grand on the unit. It was gorgeous.
So you can imagine the look on his face when I had to tell him that the computer board had gone bad on the unit and that SubZero no longer manufactured the board so there was no way I could get a replacement for it. I should also not that if a manufacturer does not support an appliance any longer there is no way a field tech can do so.
I explained to him that I had often run into this situation, that my clients in several of them had got me to pull the board so it could be sent off to be repaired by a third party vendor. The last gentleman I had done this for spent 400 bucks to have the board rebuilt and when it came back, IT STILL DIDN’T WORK!
Needless to say I was frustrated, but nowhere near as much as the client was!
Whether you’re a homeowner or a property manager, if you’re looking for a washer dryer set that won’t cost a fortune and will deliver years of service, try the Roper brand out. Check out the video above for more details on brand. Also, don’t think that because you probably haven’t heard of it, it’s no good.
This is actually Whirlpool / Kenmore’s lower end brand, but the engineering in these units has been around for decades now and is one of the most reliable brands on the market in my opinion.
If you’ve got a Roper and you’d like someone who has plenty of experience in repairing them, please give us a call at 843 568 5936.
By Brett Singleton
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