[MomDoll]

We have a Whirlpool Duet, that's costing me hundreds of dollars in damaged clothing. My husband's golf style knit shirts, my polo shirts, and our t-shirts, it puts holes in them. I tried just washing them only on the delicate cycle and a slower spin but it still damages the clothing. We're at our whits end here -
Today it was a new shirt costing over $60, worn once, and then comes out with a hole in the front of the shirt !

I think the problem lies with the tub design and a poor quality in manufacturing them. There are hundreds of little holes that are punched out around the entire inside of the stainless steel tub. If you put your finger and press slightly in you can feel the edges are sharp and not smooth. Definately capable of cutting soft wet knit clothing pressed up on the sides in a spin cycle.

To verify my suspicions I was recently at our local Homearama, some areas call it a Parade of Homes, where you have a showing of about 15-20 new model homes, and in every house I went into I opened the front loading washers and ran my hand over the inside of the tub, and found NONE of them that had the rough edges around the holes like my Whirlpool does.

Is there anybody else out there experiencing this problem? Has anybody heard if Whirlpool acknowledges the design flaw, or has offered a Tub Replacement for these early models of the Duet Washers?

[breno55]

I've had the same problem, it's taken me a while to figure out that it really was my washing machine causing the holes, even though I have suspected. I have ruined countless favorite shirts! I am livid. We should start a class action lawsuit. I called whirlpool and they were almost mean and said they haven't had any complaints like this. Here's a link of lots of people with same problem.
Holes in clothing - HELP? - Laundry Room Forum - GardenWeb

[wa7djz]

We have a Kenmore Elite front loader. It is now about 4 years old and worked ok the first few months, then started damaging knit shirts, especially my wife's and a few of my T-shirts. After about a year of dealing with Sears and numerous trips where they said nothing was wrong, we finally had one serviceman replace the paddles inside the drum. The original ones had come slightly loose. They would barely move but the new ones did not move at all. Plus they were a different design where only half the paddle protruded out into the drum any significant amount. This fixed the problem for about a year. It has started again and I noticed the paddles are very slightly loose. The only thing I can think of is that the cloth gets in between the paddle and the drum causing it to be torn or cut. We will probably have to start the whole process over again with Sears service.