We bought all new Samsung kitchen appliances during our remodel, including their fancy, quiet dishwasher. It included an easily height-adjustable top rack, which, after a couple months of use, fell onto the lower rack. Investigation showed that very small molded plastic L-shaped hooks fatigued and broke off, allowing the rack to fall (must not like hot water!). It was also odd, since we never once used the adjustment feature. Out came my bag of zip-ties so we could continue to use it until the service was approved by Samsung.
The repairman soon arrived with the new, improved unit (which turned out to be the SAME design as our original, which surprised him some). He installed it and wished us luck. A few months later it also fell onto the lower rack, but this time some of the L-shaped bits and pieces also wound up between the pump and the anti-backflow valve, so several times during a wash cycle the bits would wind up being flung around internally, sounding a lot like the ice cube crusher in our new refrigerator! So much for the quiet dishwasher we paid for.
This time the repair man had to pull the entire unit out, and replace the pump (as a caution, in case trying to grind up plastic was detrimental to the pump). His fix for the failing rack was to order a lower model’s rack which did NOT have these flimsy plastic hooks. Of course, Samsung service fought him since he was ordering parts for a dishwasher model that was not ours. After much wrangling, they shipped him the one he wanted, and so far, the “cheaper” version seems to be holding up. Samsung did extend our warranty an additional six months, so it seems the monkeys are all in the design group, not in the service group.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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