The sad part about being long in the tooth is being able to remember when companies actually made things worth buying. Not the new world order with incompetent Keller MBAs engaged in a death spiral race to the bottom, but when management and products had integrity. Today they pretty much can’t even spell the word integrity in a word processor with spell check, let alone actually find a valid definition for it.
Such appears to be the fate of Maytag. When I was a tiny lad, if you had any money at all and needed a washer you bought Maytag. Other than changing those black rubber connection hoses every few years you were looking at a decade or more of reliable service. Not anymore! These things appear to be no better than any of the made in North Korea stamped with “made in China” and sold on a Walmart shelf products flooding the country. My parents bought this machine from Lowes. They even bought the extended warranty. (My mom is the only person in the universe who ever comes out ahead on those. Her purchase of extended warranties may well be responsible for the demise of Sears.) At any rate, less than a year into owning it, the machine has its second service call.
In case any of you were wanting the model number I included the big image. Even managed to get a bit of th 10 year sticker. If you blow the image up a bit you can see “Maytag Commercial Technology” at the end of the model. If this is what is passing for commercial I really hate to seem what “home” quality has fallen to.
During the time they’ve owned it we should have kept track of just how much they were forced to spend at laundromats. I would not be surprised to learn it totals to about what they paid for the washing machine. They live out on a farm so it is roughly a 20 minute hike to a city/town with a clean-enough-you-feel-safe-to-use-it laundromat. I plaid “good son” yesterday when the weather was bad and took the laundry to a laundromat for mom. Fishing out 8 quarters for each load of wash and more to dry really emptied out my spare change bag. Given that Lowes currently lists this washing machine for around $500 . . .
Why so much? Well, this is why I suspect Keller (or some other worthless run-for-profit diploma mill) MBAs are involved. It appears Maytag has implemented JIT (Just In Time) inventory. There are no spare parts laying around. Everything is hand to mouth. JIT never works. MBAs can put together spreadsheets showing how much it saves a company but those spreadsheets leave off what it actually costs, customers.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of how JIT doesn’t work.
- Build cheap low quality product while MBAs sit in conference room chanting “cut costs cut costs” sounding like a cross between a flock of chickens and a muster of peacocks.
- Customer buys product from retailer who also sells extended warranty.
- Customer begins using product in normal manner.
- Product fails shortly into ownership. Customer contacts place of purchase and they assign third party service the case. Takes days for them to get out because they are busy. First visit is just to look at machine and make a list of needed parts.
- Service provider gets back to office to order parts only to find factory has no inventory (JIT). Next scheduled run to make needed parts is week(s) away but they can add one of each to the run.
- Service provider contacts customer back informing them it will be weeks before the parts arrive, takes beating they don’t deserve.
- Customer complains to everyone they know about being without a washing machine.
- When it happens a second time in under a year they tell son who posts a blog about it.
If you would have told me even five years ago I would be writing a blog bashing Maytag I would have laughed in your face. This is what happens when diploma mill MBAs getting into decision making roles. Given it is a different list of parts each time it fails this means it isn’t one par with an engineering flaw, rather cost cutting which ran amuck.
Buyer beware.
