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| Joined: | Sun Apr 17th, 2005 |
| Location: | State College, Pennsylvania USA |
| Posts: | 145 |
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I beleive the tall tub Whirlpool to be the best all around platform out there for the money.
It's the "all around" point that I'm trying to get a handle on. Over the past 15 years, I've had two Maytags, an entry level Whirlpool, a mid-level Whirlpool, and entry-level Frigidaire, and, now, a "Whirlpool Gold" (GU2400XTPS7). I tend toward the Whirlpools.
The story on the most recent one is that our house came with the entry-level Frigidaire when we bought it. It was made in 2003. It was so-so -- never really cleaning to my standards. Recently, while shopping for freezers, I ran across a local dealer selling a used GU2400XTPS7. Three years old. Clearly lightly used. (Membrane panel showed no signs of wear at all. None.) Service department manager assured me that two separate service calls plus bench testing could find nothing wrong with it, despite the owner's assertions that it didn't clean well. Owner traded it in, got something different. They sold me the GU2400XTPS7 for $100, with a 30-day return privilege. (A new KitchenAid KUDS30IVSS is $725 by comparison right now.) Since it matched my kitchen better than the old one that I didn't like much anyway, I didn't figure I had much to lose.
Well, I wasn't impressed with the cleaning performance either. A couple of trips into the disposal section turned up multiple largish pieces of glass, a couple of bones, a piece of a foil lid, and lots of hardened dish detergent (no doubt because the owner kept using more because of the clogging). Yeah, those techs really gave this a thorough going-over. Uh huh. It finally seems to be working well. It's not very loud, looks good, and I expect it will run a long time.
My complaints:
1. I hate silverware in the door (I knew this before I bought it). About to put the silverware holder into the lower rack permanently.
2. I don't like the adjustable upper rack (too easy to hit the clips that drop it to the lower level. May fix with some strategic wire ties.).
3. The mid-level spray arm that sprays the bottom of the upper rack is too short to reach the corners. Anything in the upper corners doesn't get really clean as a result.
4. Finally, I think the removal of six screws to get to the disposal section is too much to get in there to remove stray items (e.g., wrappers from detergent tablets, small bones, etc.) that get in there by mistake when the kids help load the dishwasher. Really, this is a maintenance procedure for a new dishwasher and should be trivial to do. I really liked the snap-together Frigidaire disposal section once I figured it out. The Bosch appeals since they skip the disposal entirely; the little filter cup catches this stuff for the user to dump in the trash. I just don't have warm and fuzzy feelings about Bosch.
In the end, I think this Whirlpool is about as good as I expect to do overall (in line with Samurai's maxim that all current dishwashers suck). However, I keep dreaming about a dishwasher that gets the dishes clean, is reliable, doesn't cost a fortune, and doesn't annoy me every time I use it. I do like the fact that at least it's assembled here, unlike the made-in-China GE unit at the church.