LG: Life is not Good if you own one of their washing machines

In September of 2009, I wrote the following letter to LG's Customer Interactive Center, complaining about what a terrible job my washer does. I wasn't hoping to get this lemon replaced, but I was hoping for a response. Well, it's been 5 months. Time to take my gripe to cyberspace, as I mentioned I would do at the end of the letter. This isn't exactly about frugality, but it is the first time I have not heard anything back when corresponding with a corporation regarding one of their products. I find that totally unacceptable, and that is why I share this. I want to spare you the headache and trouble that these appliances have caused me. Read on, and caveat emptor. I will never, ever own a product made by LG again.

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LG Customer Interactive Center
P.O. Box 240007
201 James Record Road
Huntsville, AL 35824
ATTN: CIC

To whom it may concern:

I am the very unhappy owner of a LG Washing Machine, Model WM2016CW, and a LG Electric Clothes Dryer, Model DLE2516W. I purchased these appliances new from Sears in May 2007. Together, I paid more than $2,000 for these appliances. I know they are out of their usual warranty period, but I am compelled to write and tell you how extremely dissatisfied I am with their performance, especially the performance of the washing machine. The longer I use these appliances, the more dissatisfied I become. I hate them! Never again will I purchase a front-loading washing machine.

My primary complaint is with the inability of the washing machine to get clothing clean. Not only are stains usually not removed on the first washing (even if they have been pretreated), it often takes pretreating and washing as many as three times in order for the stain to be removed. In many cases, when I have failed to pretreat a stain, it is transferred to other clothing in the same wash load. Washing on a higher soil setting, or using the Water Plus feature has very little to no effect. I find it to be highly inefficient—both in terms of my time and the electricity, water, and detergent—to have to wash clothing two to three times in order to get clothing clean. It is a waste of my time to have to examine every inch of every piece of dirty laundry for stains before putting in the washer. I have far better things to do with my time than to scrub at stains with a toothbrush and detergent or an OxiClean solution.

I have enclosed two photographs that illustrate what I am experiencing on a consistent basis.


In Photo 1 there are two stains on the back of a shirt that went through a load of laundry undetected. Upon detecting the stains, I immediately pretreated with Spray & Wash, both in stain stick and spray form, and washed again, on the highest soil setting using the Water Plus option.


Photo 2 shows the shirt after coming out of the wash (before drying), and the stains are still there. I then mixed up a solution of OxiClean for pretreating, and scrubbed the spots with a toothbrush dipped in the OxiClean solution until the stains were gone and then washed the shirt again (the stains lifted quite easily using this manual method, by the way). That is THREE washings to get stains out. Can you see why I am upset by this? Not only am I wasting time washing and rewashing clothes, but our clothing is being subjected to an unnecessary amount of wear and tear by being washed so many times.

I live in an area where we have a very reliable, clean, and naturally soft source of water. I have used virtually every High Efficiency detergent on the market, all with equally poor results. I have done my family’s washing for more than 20 years using a traditional top-loading agitator-style washer, and never had results as pathetic as these.

My husband keeps urging me to sell this washer and dryer on Craigslist and put the money toward a traditional top-loading washer and matching dryer. The only thing that is stopping me from doing this is my conscience. I could not sell this set of appliances to anyone and still be able to sleep at night. I would not wish this laundry nightmare on my worst enemy.

So, I am stuck with these lemons…or am I?? I contacted your customer support department at 1-800-243-0000, and aside from the suggestion to use the Water Plus setting (which I was already doing), received no helpful suggestions on what I could do to make my laundry experience using these appliances more acceptable. I was directed to write to this address, which I am doing in the hopes that you will be able to do something more substantial for me. Ideally, I would love to be able to return both the washer and the dryer (which does a really bad job of drying towels and socks; I have to set it on “driest” and still dry the load more than once) for a full refund. At the very least, I expect to hear from someone in your organization who has the authority to make policy decisions in this matter and can offer me some sort of solution. I am sure you appreciate the importance of ensuring customer satisfaction in this age of Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and other social media. I am an active user of all of the aforementioned social media, so rest assured that I will not hesitate to discuss this experience and its outcome with my online communities. I hope, once this matter is resolved, that I can say “LG really listened to my concerns and cares about me as a consumer.”

I look forward to hearing from you soon and learning what LG is willing to do to win me back as a customer.

Comcast Followup

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the nightmare we had when our first Comcast bill came after we switched to digital cable and also switched to their phone service. Both my hubby and I called and ranted about different things, and both service reps gave us various credits on our bill to try to appease us. Well, we've now received 2 bills since that first one that sent us over the edge, and we still have credit. I think it is down to $2.63 credit, so we will actually have to pay something next month. I'll be curious to see how much it really is going to be. I may have to call and complain again about something (it won't be hard).

This is a recurring theme in this blog, but it bears repeating: The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease. If you are unhappy about something for which you are paying, complain. At the very least, you can blow off some steam and get it off your chest, but more often than not, you'll get something.

Beware of Sneaky Comcast Salespeople

When I got laid off, one of the first things I did was to review our spending habits. For everything--food, entertainment, clothing, utilities. Everything. Phone, Internet, and Cable TV were tops on my list, because all the different companies crow about how much money we can save by bundling all our services through them. So, I started to do my research. Qwest, our phone company, had just started to advertise FiOS Internet services, which sounded pretty good to my techie hubby. I received a flyer in the mail, and called their 800-line to ask questions. I was immediately confused. The rep on the phone could not corroborate any of the information in the flyer. Everything was a different deal. After many phone calls and many different "spins" on the different services and packages, we almost figured out a package that might work for us. Then, we finally realized that unlike Verizon, Qwest did not send the DirecTV signal over the FiOS line, and that we would have to get a dish, which does not work well in our neighborhood.

I had decided not to do anything at this point because we did not want to move our land line to Comcast because we did NOT want digital voice. Along came Theresa Tsukahara (yes, I am naming names, because there are no innocent to protect) to my door one day. She had a Comcast name tag, Comcast business cards, and a sheaf of Comcast flyers. She told me straight to my face that Comcast's new phone service was IDENTICAL to Qwest's and that without a doubt we would never lose phone service if our power or cable went out. She even went so far as to say that we could use a standard wired phone with Comcast, just like Qwest. I must have made her repeat this statement a dozen times because I did not believe it. But, she convinced me. After all, she was from what I could tell, a licensed Comcast representative. She said it would have unlimited long distance and a $14.99/month charge for the first year.

I talked it over with my husband and we were beginning to be interested, especially since Theresa had also told us that if we first signed up for the phone service, then she could get us a really great deal on digital cable and a DVR for the first year. Since we needed to go to digital cable anyway because of the digital conversion coming up, we went for it.

We got our phone on May 15. Everything seemed to be great. On May 22, we were visited by another Comcast "rep," Rejeana Hartzell, who said we were going to be getting digital cable AND the DVR for $4.99/month the first year. OK, that should have been a warning bell right there because that was so cheap, but she kept saying it. We had to choose either Starz or Showtime free for a year to get this price, so we chose Starz. She looked my husband in the face and told him the DVR would give him 35-40 hours of HD recording capacity. He was thrilled. Also, she said she would upgrade our internet to a faster speed for free.

So, the upgrade was installed. We immediately missed the friendly interface and ba-doink sound of TiVO, but were willing to deal with their DVR for the added capacity and the HD recording capability. We weren't thrilled with the whole Digital TV interface, either. Then, my hubby noticed that after putting only about 10 hours of programming on the DVR, it was saying 60% full.

Fast forward to yesterday when our first bill came and I just about had a coronary. It was NOT anything close to what I had anticipated. Granted, it was for a little longer than a month because of when we switched over to the new services, but still, it was heinous. I picked up the phone and was flabbergasted by what I was told:

1. The $4.99/month was ONLY for the DVR for the first year. The regular cable channels 1-99 are the same price as they were before we upgraded, and it was only the channels over 100 that we get free for a year. OK, it is possible to see where we misunderstood what Rejeana said about this.
2. Starz is being billed at $18/month. Umm...that's not free! I had them take it off immediately, as we only added it to "qualify" for the better price on the digital package.
3. The internet speed did not get upgraded.

I complained enough, named names enough, that I eventually got escalated to a customer care specialist, who gave me credit for this, that, and the other, and essentially reduced this bill from $198 to $87. She dropped Starz off and lowered my cable and Internet each from $55/month to $29/month for the next year. She couldn't tell me anything about DVR capacity, so I told her I would make my hubby call the tech people.

When my hubby called the tech people, he found out:

1. The phone is Digital Voice, and will last only 12-18 hours after power or cable failure. This is 100% opposite what Theresa told us.
2. The DVR we have has a HD recording capacity of 15 hours. The best ones out there available through Comcast has only 20 hours, max. 35-40, huh, Rejeana?

The customer service person he talked to credited us our ENTIRE bill for this month for our trouble. Still, we are really upset (you have probably already figured this out after reading this longwinded post) and will be switching our phone back to Qwest the next time they come crawling back to us asking us to come back. We will also be buying a digital TiVO and switching back to that far superior service as soon as the year is up (and probably sooner--maybe even in the fall when all the new shows start up again).

Both of the customer care specialists that my hubby and I talked to really bad-mouthed the "door-to-door" Comcast salespeople. How in the HECK is anyone supposed to be able to find a good deal on these things if the message given by different parts of the company (sales, tech support, etc.) is completely different!

No "moral" to this story; just a cautionary tale to not trust anyone who comes to your door professing to be from Comcast, or Qwest, or anyone. Call their 800 number (and good luck with that as well).