Recalled Kenmore Washer Tears Family’s Clothes Apart, Sears Wouldn’t Replace It

$1,700 is a reasonable price for a nice Kenmore washing machine that cleans your family’s clothes. It is not a reasonable price for an automated Kenmore nightmare machine that rips your family’s clothing apart while washing them. Yet that was the ordeal of one family living near Sacramento, California whose washer still didn’t work after eight repairs. Eight.

When we say “recalled,” we mean “recalled.” Back in December 2012, we included this model of washer in our Recall Roundup, noting that the machines “machines may shake excessively and rampage around the room.” We weren’t exaggerating. Hundreds of thousands of LG and Kenmore washers had this issue, and the official remedy was to dispatch a repair technician to fix it. Great.

That wasn’t the only problem that this family had with their machine, though. It did shake violently, as the recall notice warns, but also ripped apart their clothes at the seams. Sears has made eight attempts at fixing this washer. After multiple repairs for the same issue, shouldn’t they just replace it with a comparable, non-clothes-destroying washer?

Nope. Well, not until the media gets involved. After CBS Sacramento consumer reporter Kurtis Ming intervened on the family’s behalf, a customer service bigwig at Sears promised to replace the family’s washer.

Echoing the experiences of many upset Sears customers who write to Consumerist, the machine’s owner told Ming, “I will take the machine, but I will never, ever, ever step foot in that store again.”

Call Kurtis: Store Won’t Replace Recalled Washer That Rips Clothes [CBS Sacramento]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist