I bought a Whirlpool whitemagic F65 in Dec 2006. In the last 34 months, we were away for 16 months. The machine was very sparingly used. I have no AMC. Now It became defective. The service engineer from M/s Sri Maruthi Engineering, Chennai, inspected and reported that one wire in the male/female connector at the bottom of the machine had melted and touched the metal body and burnt. The built-in fuse also blew due to direct short-circuit of the Phase wire with the Grounded metal body of the Washing Machine. He removed the connector and connected the wires directly and replaced the fuse. He declared that the main Printed Circuit Board(PCB) had gone bad due to the short-circuit and needs replacement. The cost of the PCB has been ascertained by the service engineer as Rs. 3500/-. I have paid Rs. 300/- as inspection charges and Rs. 40/- as Service Tax on that.(Total of Rs. 340/-)
I contacted Mr Issac of Sri Maruthi Engineering(Service Partner of Whirlpool of India) and explained to him that the PCB failed because of the short-circuit and the short-circuit occurred because of a faulty/bad design of the connector and clumsy tying up of the cables to the body of the machine. Even though there is no AMC, I have asked for a free replacement of the PCB. He could not take a decision on this and told that I can take-up this matter with M/s Whirlpool directly. Therefore, I sent a detailed complaint to M/s Whirlpool through their website on 13 Oct. 2009.
I am a retired Scientist from Defence Research & Development Organisation, specialised in Control Systems and I can make a professional statement that it was the defective connector design that caused the failure and not "fair wear and tear or bad usage of the product". I sincerely hoped to get a positive response from Whirlpool. There is no response from Whirlpool till date(04 Nov. 2009)
In the mean time, I investigated the defective PCB and found that It is doing all programmed events, like opening/closing the water inlet and drain valves, sensing the water level and timing the agitation, wash, rinse and spin cycles. Only thing that was wrong was that the motor was getting power continuously and the motor rotate in one direction all the time. On further analysis, I located the fault with one of the two TRIACs(BTA12). This one got short-circuited, due to heavy “short-circuit current” when the wire melted and touched the Grounded body. I could not get this component(BTA12) from the local market. However, I could get one local technician who could fix this component from his stock of spares. I paid Rs. 60/- as the cost of the component(BTA12) and Rs. 350/- as his service charge.
By this report of events, I wish to inform the general public as to how these Branded Firms take their consumers for a ride and how callously they treat the complaints and comments from the consumers. All consumers should be aware of this kind of unfriendly and unfair behavior and bring such incidents to the notice of others through this forum https://mouthshut.com
Thank you.