The 'Garbage' Kitchen Appliance Brand Customers Deem Overpriced

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Buying new kitchen appliances can be overwhelming. With an average lifespan of 10 to 15 years for modern appliances and 20 to 30 for older, lower-tech kitchen gadgets, they're a rare purchase. And by the time your stove, refrigerator, or microwave breaks, the whole industry landscape has changed. Trusted brands may have dropped in quality, new brands might have become superstars, and there may be new features on the market that every manufacturer claims are "must-haves." This makes it hard to know which appliance brands are overpriced and which will reliably serve you for a decade or more.

Luckily, we now have the internet to help us make our buying decisions. According to customers who are annoyed enough to take to their keyboards, you should avoid Electrolux appliances unless you want to drop hundreds of dollars on repairs. More specifically, people who have purchased ovens, cooktops, and microwaves from Electrolux deem them poorly built and overpriced. 

The appliance, deemed "a piece of garbage" by one reviewer on Houzz, is a slide-in range. Current very similar products are selling for over $2,000 at various appliance stores, while the newest iteration of the induction range that other commentors complain about on the same thread has a suggested retail price of close to $4,000 on Electrolux's website. Another Houzz user expresses everyone else's feelings well when he says,  "You can imagine the anger at having spent a premium price for what should be a good product", later adding, "Complexity at the expense of durability and reliability is not an advance". The consensus is clear when it comes to Electrolux ranges; they seem to be an inferior, unreliable product at a premium price. 

As Electrolux clearly isn't a budget brand, stories of repeated error codes on relatively new cooktops, a $3,000 oven requiring hundreds of dollars of repairs in its first year of use, and a broken bracket on a microwave door making the appliance unusable are all pretty damning. Worse, Electrolux doesn't seem to offer much help. The owner of the microwave, for example, wrote on DoItYourself.com that the appliance manufacturers "offered replacing the [microwave] oven door for a lot of money," which doesn't seem like the most logical fix for a small piece of missing plastic.

Not all Electrolux products are created equal, however, and there are a few happy customers out there. Many people seem satisfied with Electrolux washers and dryers, for example, but report that some product lines are less reliable than others. One Reddit user noted that their Wave-Touch washer soon became unbalanced and wobbled during the spin cycles, getting worse "as the shock absorbers and bearings began to take the toll." Another Redditor in the same thread, however, wrote that their SpeedQueen front loader is "built like a tank," while a third reported that their repair guy approves of the SpeedQueen range. Interestingly, both Home Depot and Costco stock Electrolux washers and dryers but don't sell the brand's stoves or microwaves, though this may simply be coincidence.

Electrolux's issues don't end with the gap between product quality and purchase price. Many customers report exorbitant prices for replacement parts, as well as bad customer service. Even for in-warranty items, getting in touch with a company representative can be difficult, an issue that left one Reddit user without a dryer for weeks. A Houzz user noted that they had owned their Electrolux induction range for less than a year when it broke, but were told "it will be two weeks before [a technician] can come out."

Another customer in the same Houzz thread (who also owned an Electrolux range that broke repeatedly) wrote that the company advised them to "replace parts worth $1800." This is more than many ranges cost new and is shocking even for an out-of-warranty product. It's unsurprising that this customer added, "I am taking it to the landfill and buying another brand that is reliable."

Before purchasing an Electrolux appliance, consider the warranty's fine print and the availability of technical support in your area. This might come from the manufacturer or from the point of purchase. The latter will be the case if you save money buying kitchen appliances at Costco, meaning you won't have to deal with Electrolux's questionable customer service. Check out our appliance shopping guide if you want more tips before making a big purchase.