
Joyce of Monroe, ME on Jan. 22, 2008
We purchased our Staber clothes washer in January of 2006 and paid $1200.00 for it. We live with solar power and wanted an efficient machine as well as an enviornmentally friendly machine.
This machine worked fine for the first year when we started having problems with it in the fast spin cycle at the end. It was not reliable. We thought it was because we were in a lower stage of our solar power.
As time went on, this problem got worse, when finally it would not go into the fast spin cycle at all. My husband contacted Staber and was directed to look at the circuit board. He discovered that we blew a fuse but that it was not designed to be replaced. Rather, we needed a new circuit board! As of January 2008, they cost approximately $180 each.
In October of 2007, Staber sent us a replacement circuit board and we returned our bad one to have them figure out what went wrong.
Staber sent us the wrong circuit board.
Staber sent us a 2nd board. After installation (using more than a screwdriver, by the way), we attempted washing again. No luck. This time a resistor on the board burned as well as the fuse blowing.
We called Staber. They sent us a 3rd board and accused us of having a bad solar inverter. (We run many appliances on our solar power and had never had a problem: water pump, computer and printer, vacuum cleaner, toaster, television, radio and even a microwave!) This board didn't work either and we blew another fuse.
Staber sent us a 4th board which we ONLY used when our system was on generator power, which was their suggestion. I managed one load of wash successfully. The second load blew a fuse.
My husband knows his way around electrical mechanics to the extent that he wired our entire house and solar system. In his dealings with Staber, he has been given misinformation and unsuccessfully tried everything they suggested.
Staber has not charged us for any of the boards they sent us. As of this writing, we have four bad boards lined up on our counter and we are reluctant to return them to Staber. They have not let us know what was bad with the first board that we returned in November. It is essentially lost. They assure us that they cannot figure out what our 'problem' is unless they have all the boards back. I don't trust them.
We are angry for having spent more money on a machine that we believed to be superior and looked forward to decades of good use. Instead we spent almost $2000 on a machine and got 2 years use out of it.
Staber is not friendly with us, telling us that our machine is out of warranty.
My husband has tried to discuss a major flaw in design with a circuit board that does not 'protect' itself: a fuse goes, the whole board goes!!!
I certainly wonder how anyone in this company would feel to receive the kind of service they are providing!
We are very unsatisfied customers and are stuck dealing with a service technician that is not knowledgeable enough.