Matt tells Consumerist that he was disappointed in his Maytag washing machine, which had required two service visits in as many years. Maytag’s social media team, monitoring the Internets for unhappy customers, saw his frustrated tweet about the washing machine, and reached out to him to set things right.

In June 2008 before I had to leave for a business trip out of the country for two weeks my Kenmore dryer of 8 years died. So I went looking for a new dryer and found a good deal at Best Buy on a Maytag. I purchased the Dryer for $500 and the next day I found the matching washer as a open box special at a local Sears and bought it as well. I loved the new washer and dryer and my family has had good luck with them in the past with their purchases. For myself, no so lucky, so far into two years of ownership I have had to open up two service calls.

First call was 5-6 months into ownership of the washer I noticed it was really noisy and was concerned with it to the point of opening a service call under warranty to have it looked at. The A&E (Sears) repair guy came on site and found that the washer was missing a balancing ring from the factory and it was throwing the unit off balance. The part was ordered and everything was fixed with in a week.

Fast forward to just near the 2 year ownership mark and I start to hear a whining coming from the washer during the spin cycle. I open a service call on site with A&E and they come on site to look at the washer. At this point its out of its 1 year warranty and I am charged $129 for the diagnostic visit and told the motor is going bad and it would cost $344 for the part + labor to install it. Which was far more than what I even paid for the washer in the first place. Frustrated I asked the A&E guy if the part was broke from the original unbalanced missing part and was told no that wasn’t why it broke not even 2 years into service. In my mind I was disappointed. I heard good things from my father who had a set of Maytag washer and dryers so I expected this set to last at least a nice 10 years.. but here I was not even 2 years into ownership and the drive is dying on my washer. So at this point I asked the A&E guy to put everything back together and I would call Maytag about it.

I called Maytag that very morning just after the A&E tech left and was told the washer was out of warrenty however looking at my ticket they would be willing to pay for the $344 dollar part but asked me to pay the labor.. which was sort of a improvement in my situation but I was still pissed I had a 2 year old washer dying on me that I had to pay out of pocket to fix. (Seriously, I understand giving a 1 year warranty saves them money but it left me with a sour taste in my mouth.)

So as I normally do I vented on my facebook and twitter status about it to my friends and that I thought it was Bull*** that a Maytag washer not even 2 years old could not out last my 8 year old Kenmore that was still working when when I upgraded it. At this time I was messaged by MaytagCare on Twitter and they asked to see what they could do to help. I told them my situation and they asked for my contact info and serial/model numbers. The next day Stefanie at Maytag/Kitchenaid called me to tell me follow up on the issue and give me a 2nd phone call to tell me that the labor would also be covered for the part installation, which I was really grateful for as money is tight right now. So now I just want to say Maytag stepped up, I am still out the first $129 for the original visit but I have to say at least the part and installation are now covered.

I think its great Maytag reps saw my complaint on Twitter and stepped up to help resolve it. I still have concern that Maytag product may have issues in the future so I am considering a extended warranty, however I want to give props to Maytag to taking advantage of social networking and helping a first time customer out. It does help smooth out some of the reservations I had with their product. I still have concern why vendors sell large ticket items for large sums of money but don’t offer at least a couple years of warranty but I suspect that’s a topic for another day.

If you’d like to reach the nice people in Maytag’s social media team directly, you can find them at MaytagCare on Twitter.

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