All American Appliance Service Inc. owner Bonnie Woolsey is an appliance expert with more than 20 years in the industry. Since 1994, she has owned her own business, located in Stafford, Virginia. In this piece, Woolsey explains whether it is worth the money to buy a brand name home appliance instead of a generic model.
Absolutely, I believe that it is worth the money for people to buy a brand name appliance when they are purchasing a new product for their home. And I say this for a number of reasons.
For one thing, you are going to get service more quickly if you go with a brand name appliance instead of a generic version. When you go with one of these off brand washers and dryers, trying to find someone to service them or repair them right away is going to be difficult if not costly — and that is especially true if you need the job done quickly.
Another reason that I recommended that people stay away from off-brand appliances is because the products made by name-brand companies are going to offers you more protection if something goes wrong. Most brand-name companies have better warranties in place as far as customer service should something go wrong and break inside your appliance.
In addition, a name brand appliance company will usually do a better job of advising you if something goes wrong with your model and if there have been any recalls on the item you purchased, along with other things of that nature. So that is another reason why we always advise people to stick to the brand names when they’re making a costly purchase like buying an appliance.
In terms of which specific brand names have a better reputation than others, we here at All American Appliance Service personally prefer the Whirlpool product line over some of the other brands. There are a couple of reasons for that. One reason is because Whirlpool is really good about customer service and replacing parts more quickly and with less trouble than some of the other companies out there selling appliances.
All manufacturers have problems, of course, there is no getting around that. But Whirlpool is really good about letting customers know if there is a known defect that has come up or if there is a problem with the manufacturing of the appliance that needs to be fixed.
Let’s say, for instance, that a defect comes up with a Whirlpool product. What will happen then is the following year they will correct that known defect on the future models they produce. But in addition to that, a quality company like Whirlpool will also upgrade the versions of the subsequent parts that they are using to fix that defect in the appliances that were already purchased, too. So Whirlpool is better, in my opinion, about maintaining and upgrading their appliances, notifying the public of problems that have come up, and then correcting them in a timely manner than some other companies.
With pretty much all name-brand appliances, consumers should be getting a standard one-year warranty that comes with the purchase. These companies used to offer warranties that covered a one-, two-, five-, or even 10-year period, but now they have pretty much narrowed that down to just a standard one-year warranty for customers.
What is really important, though, is that buyers read those warranties and know what is covered in case something does happen or go wrong during the first year of owning the appliance. When your appliance is under that one-year warranty, you absolutely should always go through the manufacturer to get your appliance problems fixed as soon as something comes up.
The No. 1 reason we say this is because the manufacturers have documentation that we as independent service centers may not have, because a lot of information is kept in-house. So the manufacturer is going to have more known documentation of the problem, and they are probably going to have that new part available to them a little bit quicker than at smaller service centers.
Also, if you get a lemon — and it does happen — then to have all that notated through the manufacturer is to the customer’s benefit when it comes time to get a repair or a replacement. So we always, always advise people to stick with their manufacturer during that first year of warranty protection.
