Katie’s Maytag dishwasher barfs water all over the place and has had multiple parts fail. Recently the company issued a recall for her model offering a repair or $200 credit but unfortunately her serial number wasn’t included in the list. Where’s that old Maytag guy when you need him? Oh right, forced into early retirement and replaced with an outsourced vendor.

Katie writes:

I am writing today to tell you about a fun (hah!) experience I have had with my Maytag dishwasher.

We purchased a Maytag stand alone dishwasher on October 31, 2009. It cost us around $500 because it was stand alone (older house so we had no where in our kitchen to put it.) When we got it out of the box and hooked it up, we ran it with much glee. Except it was short lived. The unit immediately began to leak all over the my kitchen, causing us panic; then be grumpy when we had to call out service for our brand new dishwasher (Lowe’s wouldn’t take it back.)

Okay, it gets fixed, all is good. Then the front panel goes out. Whatever, we can just finagle it oddly and it starts up. Then the part that clips onto the faucet goes out. The repairman who comes out from A&E factory assistance is surly and tells us that these machines are finicky and now becoming rare. That doesn’t apply to us and we don’t care; our house is older and we REALLY just want a dishwasher.

It takes a month for both parts to come. I call A&E on a Thursday and they are able to come out and fix it the following Monday. Well, that was the Monday of this week. Last night we went to run the dishes and the part that attaches to the faucet starts spraying during the cycle, making puddles of water all over my counters.

Today we got a letter from Maytag saying that some of their dishwashers have gotten recalled because they could overheat and set your kitchen ON FIRE. They recommend that if you have a stand alone to unplug it and if you have one that goes under your counter to completely shut off the breaker that it attaches to it. They are offering a repair or a $200 credit to get a new one. When we examined our serial number, ours was not recalled.

I called Maytag’s customer service line and told the nice cs rep about my troubles and asked her if there was any higher up I could speak to, she emphasized and said she did not.

After writing this all this to you, do you happen to have the emails or phone numbers for the exes of Maytag? I am upset that it keeps having problems despite multiple fixes. In my grandparents day, Maytag was a prestigious, quality product but this makes me never want to even look at one of their products again even if it was cheap.

Try getting in touch with Maytag via their Twitter account. They seem to be trying to help people with their problems.

You can also report your woes to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It’s possible Maytag’s recall could get expanded.

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