Now it’s exploding Samsung washing machines
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Samsung refuses to honor the warranty about this issue.
I've jury-rigged 2 temp sensors with a photodiode to my existing IoT infrastructure (https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehacker...). As of right now, if the temp goes over a set point for more than 5 minutes with door closed, an alarm will be sent to our lights and my laptop (wherever it may be).
But this alarm means I have to take out the bottom shelves, unscrew the panel, and clean out the ice with a heat gun. It's better than having spoiled food.
I know, whatever it's called, has copper pipes hooked up to a heatsink, with a blower fan that spreads the chilled air. It's in the bottom of the fridge side, inside the refrigerator chamber.
The failure mode, which is evidently widespread online, is that condensation seizes up the fan blower, stops the fan, and temps rise gradually.
Fridge outside temperature should be low (~72 f) and outside of direct sunlight.
The evaporation coils need good airflow (a tiny fan can significantly increase efficiency.)
I would verify there is a tight seal around the door and the water drip is clog free.
The link is a complete how-to for my whole infrastructure, which spans multiple buildings, and sends all my sensor data to a central server (sitting next to my DSL modem at my house, no less).
I use Tor extensively, including my whole network topology. It allows me to create a cloud of my own machines, rather than depending on $CloudVendor. :) But everything is documented. Have at :D
Don't have any complaints about it otherwise (unless it turns out to be an exploding model) but I've never had a new appliance smell so much for so long. You've got an hour, tops, to get the clothes out of it and into the (older, other brand) drier or they'll stink of Samsung chemicals and you'll have to run them again.
Interesting. I thought the same thing about a Samsung dishwasher. We bought it because it was very quiet, but it took two hours to do a half-assed job cleaning any dishes. Nearly useless.
We thought about taking it back, but we were selling the house when we were forced to buy it and didn't have time to deal with replacement. I just left the receipt in the drawer next to it and let the new owners deal with it.
I have a 65" 4K Samsung TV (JS8500) purchased 1 year ago. We bought it because it was the top of the line, best reviewed non-curved, non-OLED TV. Worst purchase ever. The entire goal was to buy high end and avoid hassles. Had I known what a PITA it was going to be, I'd have just gotten a vizio at Sam's club.
The day it was delivered I noticed the 2 bottom corners were very bright (my wife didn't when she accepted delivery). It was incredibly distracting. It looked like somebody was pressing on them. A thread on avsforum.com for the TV indicated that lots of the 65" JS8500 had started showing up like this the week that I got mine. The retailer first asked me to deal with Samsung for a warranty replacement. I went through level after level of tech support, with each level telling me to basically pound sand. I bought it, that was normal for LED TVS, too bad. Others in the AVS forum thread reported similar experiances.
The retailer, after speaking to a manager, replaced it for me with the same model. This one we opened before delivery to confirm that it did not have the issue.
That experience has taught me to never buy Samsung again.
Oh, and did I mention the pop up ads on my TV thanks to their smart tv software? FU Samsung.
I keep seeing this. Last time it was someone trying to get a different outcome from Apple.
The products in question all have serial numbers and tie into a database that reps all have access to making it simple to re-deny an already denied claim. Do people ever have success talking to multiple reps?
This is really what concerns me about their patch for the Note 7 that attempts to reduce the chance if the battery exploding by limiting the charge to 60%. We've go no reason to trust their software engineering any more than their hardware engineering.
Granted, it seems European machines are smaller and faster compared to US so maybe they spend a little more effort here, becase they would explode if misbalanced and spinning at 1400 rpm.
That really makes me wonder what's happening with these Samsungs --- the article has quotes like these...
One Georgia mom was pulling clothes from the dryer, with her 4-year-old son nearby, when she heard the boom and saw the damage.
...which make it sound like the machine was behaving perfectly normally, and then spontaneously self-destructed with no signs of vibration beforehand. That is very unusual. Even in the destructive videos on YouTube where the machine is deliberately unbalanced with an extremely heavy piece of non-clothing, they still shake loudly and viciously for some time before disintegrating.
My first thought was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2WmpsrVrTg
I'm surprised there's not a regular event.
Any washing machine, if not level and if overloaded, will shake violently. The picture in the article showed a very small, seemingly fragile washing machine. I imagine one must take extra care to not overload such a machine. In fact, I know that these machines do have warnings to not overload them. What more could reasonably be expected of Samsung?
Safety can be easily explained by the Swiss cheese model. In order for a catastrophic safety incident to occur, usually you need a series of events to align one after another like having the holes of several Swiss cheese layers match up before you can go straight through.
Standard IANAL.
Unfortunately companies can't always offload all their liability to the customer in this manner. We will see with the result of this lawsuit whether this is such a case.
They're likely going to argue that a reasonable person who buys a washing machine expects that it will continue to operate safely with any amount or configuration of clothing so long as the it fits in the drum and the machine isn't modified. Sure, if you 'overfill'[1] the machine one might expect the quality of the wash to degrade, but not that the machine will become dangerous.
From a practical standpoint, it's perfectly possible to create a washing machine that can handle any amount and configuration of clothing simply by making a tumbler that strong enough to handle many times the weight of clothes. Or the machine could simply refuse to operate if it detects that it's over weight or off-balance. So Samsung won't get very far if they try to argue that it's not possible to manufacture such a machine and that their customers have no choice but to take precautions. But undoubtedly they will argue that it's cost prohibitive and that their customers are responsible for taking those precautions in exchange for the simpler and cheaper design.
[1] I use scare quotes because for sure they will call into question Samsung's use and meaning of the term.
(Seen that happen and customer complain, in no way specific to Samsung.)
I think all this is completely over the head. Say what maybe 3 machines exploded? That's far below the "noise" you have in every thing, it is statistically irrelevant.
Also, side question: when I pay for a product like a baby stroller from a western company, which part of this money is spent on "law abiding", i.e. the verbose amount of warnings sticked everywhere and all the lawyers behind? I just bought one and this kind stroller tells me loudly I'm stupid from every side of it. I had a Japanese stroller before: cheaper, lighter, just better for kids and parents in every respect, and a just a brief non-liability warning. If I put 4 ten year old fat kid is will break, OBviously. That would be my fault.
But if I put way too much weight in the trunk of the car, and start driving, and the rear axle fails and there is an accident, yes, I'm still saying it's a user error.
(It's by the way worth considering how much weight you do put in the trunk, or perhaps more importantly, how much you put in a trailer. I transported some concrete garden patio slabs and without calculating the actual weight, put a bit too many of them both in the trunk and in the trailer. It was definitely not fun to drive.)
Honestly, I don't think it's too unreasonable for any given person not to be able to estimate the mass of a load of laundry. I assume the recommendations (4kg, as you suggested) are educated guesses at best as it's hard to tell how much water any given item will retain during the spin cycle. Since it's an imprecise calculation anyways, wouldn't it make more sense to instead just let the machine dictate its own limits so the user can adjust their washing habits subsequently?
edit: mistyped and forgot to write "...because it seems like there were no safeguards put in place."
Fortunately.
...and just for fun, there's also plenty of videos of deliberately unbalanced machines doing the same, for a bit of sordid entertainment and as a reminder of why you should always take care to balance the load. Here's one rather amusing example:
That said, then there should be a weighing mechanism and correct slow start procedure to balance the load. Probably an accelerometer to slow down if a vibration threshold is exceeded.
I am talking about safeguards costing pennies per machine, including implementation.
The question of what to "expect" is beyond my pay-grade, but this sounds like a design problem.
The traditional solution to this problem is an interlock (eg microwave doors). An accelerometer might sense when vibrations exceed safe limits and limit the drum speed or cancel the cycle.
As Don Norman points out, text labels are a sign of unclear design.[1] Do washing machine users and and washing machine designers have the same definition of "overloading?" Can you show it graphically? Project a laser level? Change the shape of the door or front cover? A visual line directly in the drum itself? (the drum ideally returns to a 'home' position)
[1] http://99percentinvisible.org/article/norman-doors-dont-know...
Much law turns on various "reasonable person" standards. A reasonable person, IMHO, does't expect a violent, potentially lethal, mechanical disintegration just for overloading the drum by 10%.
With a heavy thing that rotates at 1600min-1 you should think what you are doing and consider the thing being potentially lethal.
Otherwise... are you keeping your smartphone in your pocket? Are you aware that this thing is basically a live grenade, held together by cheap manufacturing and good wishes of engineers who designed the battery controller?
On a sidenote:
I think physics always trumps "consumer regulations". I do not believe in the power of law above physics, e.g. IMHO a law that declares gravity illegal would not work.
A heavy thing rotating at 1600/min is potentially lethal, you can put as much engineering in it as you want. Yes you can make it safer, but it remains potentially lethal. It's the physics of a heavy thing that rotates at 1600/min.
A lithium-ion battery is potentially lethal. You can have as much regulations, laws and red tape as you like, you can't change the fact that lithium-ion batteries are potentially lethal.
And if you overload a washing maschine by stuffing in a 50% more than it was designed for, you should be aware that you do this to a potentially lethal thing.
And putting a "Don't put a cat into a microwave" sticker on a microwave doesn't change the physics of the microwave, it is potentially lethal to the cat. You can't regulate the physics of microwaves.
Same goes for cars. Potentially lethal. If you drive it beyond it's - or your - capabilities, it will kill you - car manufacturing regulations can't save you. It is potentially lethal. It is potentially lethal even with all the regulations and driving the car within your and it's capabilities, e.g. when a tire explodes. Regulations don't save you. Using potentially lethal thinks is potentially lethal.
And if the incentives are structured right, it can be entirely reasonable for consumers to assume that potentially risky things are in fact entirely safe.
>you can't change the fact that lithium-ion batteries are potentially lethal.
And yet you feel comfortable carrying it around in your pocket. Which is exactly the point.
Why should washing machines be any different?
No, see my other comment and search for exploding LG and Whirlpool machines on Youtube.
Youtube seems to disagree with Whirpool, GE, LG and many more machines "exploding" e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z4fjiCz6tU (LG)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNpRqxdsQAY (Whirlpool)
More than one person can play this game.
Is it too much to expect Samsung to have implemented a standard feature everyone else in the industry doesn't seem to have a problem with?
Overload detection and automatic shutdown in case of excessive loads maybe?
You design these things to handle the load and stresses seen in an imbalance before the safety mechanism can shut it down.
Goodness knows, I'm sure making a noisy beeping sound, printing "Load too heavy/unbalanced" on the LCD and refusing to run would be totally unreasonable ?
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/95yearold-woman-rescued-from-samsu... http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/81798360/Thousands...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-14/samsung-washine-machin...
https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/laundry-and-cleani...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3505540/Samsung-face...
http://www.penzba.co.uk/GreybeardStories/TheBlackTeam.html
And wind turbine fail compilations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzgIxMEo8g
Physics is mean, especially when you're trying to spin heavy things really fast.
I don't find it useful to reproduce sarcastic tweets in the middle of a Washington Post article. I believe it does not add any information to what the article is describing, and actually makes it look more like infotainment. The issue is already serious and interesting enough.
E{cost} = P(failure) * {expected lawsuit payout} < {cost of recall and actually fixing the problem}
Just like in Fight Club...
Like any shop selling washing machines will actually care.
Like any of us will remember about this six months from now.
Brand image is overrated. A lot of companies know that, and that's why they get away with all the shit they do.
Samsung does a lot of things: Cars, phones, refrigerators, TVs, life insurance... it's pretty diversified, so if there's a Samsung washing machine recall, I don't think that Koreans will cancel their life insurance policies.
Did you know Kenmore washing machines are actually LG? I didn't either until now... it's all too easy to just do a rebrand or latch onto somebody else's as a supplier, if things go nuclear.
To say nothing of calling in the emergency PR salvaging operation (like Lenovo did just recently with their BIOS update that locked out Linux on its consumer ultrabooks -- just have the press deflect blame on Intel for not jumping through onerous hoops to support Lenovo's crazy single-drive RAID scheme on Linux, but I digress).
Also, Miele vacuums are amazing for their reliability and durability compared to something like a Dyson, which has over the years evolved into an overpriced and poorly built item.
Importantly, the warranty is between the buyer and the seller, not the manufacturer. They must either repair (within reasonable time), replace with equal or better model (at no extra cost) or give your money back. The point is that the buyer reasonably can expect a certain kind of functionality from the product when they buy it, such as a washing machine actually cleaning your clothes, not destroying them and functioning properly at least 2 years. If not, buyer and seller must come to a reasonable solution (it's all very reasonable). Although the seller tends to try to point to the manufacturer and sometimes manages to convince buyer to pay some of the costs, they shouldn't have.
Anyway, Samsung would be pretty stupid if they didn't pay extra care to manufacturing quality of products sold in the EU because of this. This implies that other regions that do not have this legal warranty because the free market demands it, necessarily must get slightly-less-carefully-quality-controlled items. Avoiding Samsung because of this seems like setting yourself up for the next brand to screw you over.
Knowing that Samsung is selling machines that explode and catch fire ... I guess I'll bump our replacement up on the schedule. I do like the little ditty it plays when its done though. Reminds me of traveling through eastern Asia. Cute ditties seemed to be very common over there, from vending machines to garbage trucks. It's a small thing, but it has a way of brightening your surroundings the way an ice cream truck in America does.
Purchased a Bosch washer-dryer after the LG decided it no longer wanted to pump water out of the machine, eventually flooding our hallway. The Bosch works nicely - you can open it when the alarm sounds! - but you have to reset the cycle toggle for every new load (basically set it to off then on again) otherwise it just beeps at you and won't start the cycle. If we can buy $50 touch-screen smart phones with a fully fledged OS in the supermarket, why can't we bolt similar devices to dumb microwaves, washers etc to make them smarter? I mean, why do I have to dig out a manual to figure out what the fuck error D7 means?
Those were Whirlpool though, not Samsung.
I'm not sure if there's another variable that would lead to different experiences. Like you say perhaps it's dependent on water. Water in my area is very hard. Perhaps it depends on soap. Some detergents contain borax which is particularly good at killing mold in this situation. Maybe some machines are better at draining and/or airing out when not in-use. Frequent use of bleach may help.
The previous owners of the machines were not ... the best of tenants. Perhaps they did something else to compound the issue. Excessive soap is an additional culprit.
Not just rumblings. A recent settlement was reached and consumers who own various models of Whirlpool, Kenmore, or Maytag front-loading washing machines are entitled to numerous clams including a 5% discount on a new purchase, a $50 rebate, or a $500 reimbursement for previous repairs. [1]