Dyson, good and bad

James Dyson makes washing machines. He clearly knows nothing about accessible web sites, or I'd point you to the pictures of the two machines that we have of his. I don't know if they are well known outside of the UK, but in the Uk they made quite a stir when this guy came up with the design. Really quite different from previous designs. Initially we bought a Hoover from him (if you'll excuse the lame excuse for humour). It worked well, even if it did cost over the odds.

More recently (probably about 4 years ago), we bought a washing machine from him. I'm a real cynic when it comes to servicing (and many other things I guess), so I wasn't expecting much when we called them out to the machine, under warranty. Anyway, this guy came out, fixed it, did a little extra. It was the sort of thing that you hear being told about on customer relationship courses. Listen to the customer. Log all faults. If one comes up regularly find out why, and fix it, even if not reported. And that's exactly what he did. Two items, not reported by us, but fixed at no cost there and then. Ten out of ten for Dyson. He also told us that Dyson have a policy of a fixed charge for a 'repair', i.e. includes parts and labour. I think they have two levels, probably one for major, one for minor items. Made sense to me. Avoids the hassle of calling a guy out and being told that's X pounds for the callout, and it will cost you another Y pounds for the repair, but I haven't a spare part with me. E.g. the sort of rip-off that I guess is pretty common these days.

Moving on. Over the last few months our washing machine has been finishing its cycle and telling us (via the snazzy (but inaccessible)) LED display, that it couldn't run something, for some reason. The clothes were clean and reasonably dry, so we ignored it. Last week my wife actually noticed that the contra rotating drum halves (a selling point of the machine), weren't contra-rotating, if you see what I mean. If you look in the machine, you can see the drum is built of two halves. At some point it starts to spin the two halves in the opposite directions, supposedly imitating the rubbing together of clothes as seen in days gone by to remove dirt. So! Having something solid to report, we rang them up, reported the fault and expected the appropriate (but fixed) charge. The guy from Dyson (no not a subcon) arrives, extracts some data from the machine (EEPROM'd I guess) and told us what the reported fault was, when we last had it serviced etc. Spooky when your washing machine is recording what you do! I'd have been upset if it reported that my underwear was rather dirty three weeks ago! The problem as diagnosed as being the drum bearings. Ouch. He then pointed out that 'these shouldn't go at this age', and promptly offered to replace it free of charge, and would return with assistance since it's a two man job! Now is that impressive of is that impressive? Yet again he 'upated' our machine, replacing a couple of smaller parts which (in other peoples machines) had been causing problems.

It reminded me of the classic 12 months plus a day problem. 12 months warranty and you take it back to the shop a day after that. Of course it's out of warranty. Can I sell you a new one sir? It leaves me fuming and vowing never to buy X again. The impression here is that Dyson make good product and are prepared to stand by their quality statements.

Summary. I can thoroughly recommend Dyson washing machines.