Sep 25, 2011 02:55 PM
18212 Views
It has been a year since our family has had a new entrant in the form of my little angel baby girl and we realized as the little one was growing we had a new weekend task viz. Washing Clothes. Our 6 year old Videocon semi automatic 4 kg used to do the job but it used to take us the complete first half of Saturday or Sunday washing clothes, then rinsing them, and finally drying them. More-over we would consume the whole water tank(backup water tank above my bathroom) and it was disgusting to see water being used to that extent but we could do little as we had to wear clean clothes and the little one needed cleaner clothes. Not that the old Videocon was bad(It was used by my wife when she was still single and I used to remark on how good this "Dahej" was for the family) but it had limited capacity to wash and since we'd grown as a family it would be a situation that 70% of the clothes were of my little one which needed special washing care.
So, finally one day we decided that we need to retire our old washing machine and go for a new one. I was of the opinion to buy IFB. My aunt has had an IFB for around 9 years now still going good. However, since I'm on mouthshut most of the time I came to know the ill service IFB provides. So the next option on my mind was LG with the direct drum and 4 year warranty on the drum. So I went back to my favorite electronics dealer(HUNS Pune) to check out a few front loading machines. The sales man recognized me(please also read my review on whirlpool AC which I bought 2 years ago from the same dealer) since I had been his customer before. He showed us LG and Samsung quite lethargic-ally which was surprising as all dealers get huge margins from the Koreans and they go all out to sell these brands. He had IFB as well and he was straight forward to say that IFB 6 year ago and IFB now is not the same. There are numerous complaints on the product quality in the recent past and the service is very poor. Next to IFB was a full range of Seimens. Now I knew about Seimens being in the Indian market but for the fact that they were ultra costly and ran their own signature stores. In simpe you seldom found their products at a local dealer. The sales man told me that Seimens is quite aggressive now and their quality can be still sworn by(truly German as you may call it). So he showed us the Seimens WM08G260IN front load which had minimal features(I do not want timers or other fundo features, was more inclined on a basic model), had a capacity of 5.5 kg, and had a well built body(this was in comparison with the Koreans). The downside was I would have to shell out an extra 6K in comparison with the Koreans. We spoke among ourselves and decided that the extra sum may give us peace of mind and a better product. Hence, we paid a token amount(what I like about this dealer is you can pay the full amount on delivery and pay only a minimum token to book your order) and were promised a delivery the next day when we had to pay the full amount(it costed me 23.5K in total). The delivery was as promised and two chaps from the showroom delivered the machine(that is a heavy piece of 65 kg) at my home. I was told that it being a Sunday, the demo guy from Seimens would come the next day. I got in touch with a local plumber to get all the fittings done. The problem here is Seimens has different valves and fixtures than the Koreans. The Korean machines are more practicle in the sense you can fix inlet water on a tap which can be easily removed and fixed back as per convenience. However, Seimens requires a permanent fix of a valve direclty to the machine. This was a big task so I thought let me take help from the demo guy. The demo guy called me next morning and visited in the afternoon(when I was away at work) but spoke to my wife. He came with a printed job card with the tasks to be performed which looked very professional. However, he was unhappy that the fittings were not done for him to demo the product. He straightaway denied that he would be of any help in plumbing work but drew a few diagrams for my wife and left stating when the fitting is done he will come again. The evening I got hold of the plumber and got all the fittings done. The demo guy agan visited us next day with a new job card(with updates from last visit which stated that water fittings setup was incomplete hence demo not done). I was really impressed that the person was not unhappy that he had to visit us for a second time and he demo-ed the product for us. We asked him if we could purchase a cover and stand from him for which he said that the company doesn't have any accessories as of now. However, we may see in the local market if the above can be bought and he may not be able to help us with this. This was sad as the machine may gather dust and probably rust if we dont cover and put a stand. He however, convinced us that the build quality is far better than anything in the market and if maintained well, the machine will give us good service. So finally it was the first time of use of our machine and we had to do a pre-wash before anything else. A few problems we've noted that a standard wash takes over an hour and the least time for washing would be 40 mins for a quick wash. Man that is too much time. However, since this is an automatic machine I guess we should factor in all the activities viz. soaking, washing, rinsing, and drying. So probably the time is valid for an auto wash.
I have been using this machine for the past 4 months now and I am really impressed with the wash quality. It is better than our old semi automatic and we definitely don't spend long hours washing our clothes on weekends rather we wash once in three days and it does everything but drying the clothes completely(if only it could have dried the clothes completely we didn't need to use a clothe line). Another aspect is the water usage. I thought that it would consume more water than the semi auto but it is surprising that it infact uses less water and provides better wash quality. It doesn't move or dance at all if you've rested the machine at the straight level on the floor(use a spirit leveler to do this, it is very important for the drum that the machine is in a straight level).
All in all I am very happy with my purchase and hope that I would not need to see the service center soon. I would recommend this product if you can shell out that extra money for a better product.
