With all the opinions, assumed problems, brands, types, and style of washing machines these days, its important to get a perspective of what exactly is being compared. With strict government energy guidelines, manufacturers are forced to comply and reengineer products to meet that criteria. The difficult task is manufacturing a product that still cleans, uses much less water, and promoting it in such a way it still sells. None of this information is new but it goes a long way into understanding what is being compared. Their are distinct categories of washing machines each with specific positives and negatives. Traditional Front Load Washer-Excellent cleaning, Uses plenty of water for effective cleaning , Average Cycle times, Gentle on Clothes, and finished load quality is better and softer. The later is directly related to having sufficient immersion of the load in plenty of water. Water temperatures are not locked down or lowered to meet current standards. Average life span is 10 years or more. HE Front Load Washer-Very Good cleaning, Substandard amount of water used, Long Cycle times, Harder on clothing because of the lack of water and friction of the garments creates lint and pilling issues in some instances. Finish load quality is harsh. (Scratchy towel syndrome) Clothes tend to wear out quicker. Dumbed Down water temps. (Hot is the new warm, warm is cool, and cool is cold) None of the new HE machines that I know of offer a 100% tap Hot fill. Average life span 7 - 10 years. Traditional Top Load Agitator Style-Excellent cleaning. Ridiculous amount of water usage. Short cycle times. Gentler on clothing than HE Top Loader and HE Front Loaders. Excellent lint and pet hair redisposition than all other types of machines. All other machines lack a recirculation water pump and lint filter. Temperatures not dumbed down and limited to Hot water supply temperature. Average life span 15-25 years. HE Top Loader-Below average cleaning. Moderate Cycle times. Tangles and knots clothing. Average amount of water usage but not enough for a vertical axis machine to properly clean. Dumbed Down water temps. Average life span 5-7 years. Build quality in all the new HE machines is virtually identical, neither here nor there. With the exception of Miele and Speed Queen which by far is superior. Unfortunately Speed Queen failed to keep pace with the technology and marketing over the years and are really not in pace with the competition. They are not available in mainstream big box or other retail but through a dealer only arrangement. If it wasn't for their share in coin-op commercial they most likely would have been bought out long ago. They were not mainstream in the 70's, 80's, and later years when top loaders were all the rage, while Kenmore, Whirlpool, Maytag, GE emerged as the market leaders. Today Samsung, LG have gobbled the market share with Whirlpool and it's acquired sub brands now trying to keep pace. Miele just isn't an option in the U.S. and didn't compete very well when introduced to this market years ago. Lack of service, capacity, and features. They too were dwarfed by the Korean competition. So there's a lot to consider when deciding if you like or dislike your current machine. I liked all my machines, commercial, very old double Dexter wringer, old style top loader, conventional front loader, and yes there are even things I like about my HE front loader. I would like it a lot better if government would QUIT placing ridiculous regulations on laundry equipment. When you have to use a work around to get the appliance to do what it was meant to do, we are moving backwards!

I have not gotten anything from writing to them yesterday other then the standard automated response: Your request (#2438949) has been received and is being reviewed by our Customer Support staff. We strive to respond to all requests within 2 business days. Our normal hours of operation are Monday-Friday, 8am-6pm Pacific time, excluding holidays.

I don't own a debit card. I refuse them and also dislike pins which I will only use when required. Only one card in my wallet requires one. A 4 digit pin is about as useful security wise in my opinion as a four letter password. I do keep cash on hand but 99% of my purchases are with credit cards that carry some sort of reward. The only store card I use regularly is a Target/Mastercard that can be used anywhere. Not going to say no to 5% off stacked on other discounts available. I avoid store cards unless they can be used as regular CCs elsewhere. Also if a store bites the dust like Sears did the issuer will convert them often offer special financing. My Sears card was replaced by the issuer, no hard pull involved, and they offered 1 years zero interest on purchases as if it was a new card. I tend to buy new appliances and major household purchases that way. Use the banks money for as long as I can rather than my own makes sense to me. But I am good at money management and know our limits. Haven't paid interest in over a decade except for vehicle purchases. I juggle about 6-8 cards at any given time. DS is even better at it than me. He juggles dozens and churns. But he is younger,has the capital to do it with, and is blessed with a photographic memory along with his super math brain.

It's true that no matter what tag database is used, the supplied information can have problems. Not usually with the big name, blockbuster mainstream albums - which for me I might cite Sgt Pepper's, Hotel California, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and similar others - but rather the ones where the name is ambiguous, there are multiple different albums with the same name, or the album is a bit more obscure and less known. But sometimes even with well known, popular ones. There is a freeware program - contributions welcome at the downloaders option - called MP3tag. The name is misleading, it can edit and change tags for all types of sound files. MP3tag will access databases MusicBrainz and Discogs for tag info, album art, or both, at the user's choice. It's easy to use. As I said before, tag editing is essential and quite often becomes a manual rather than automatic exercise. Other than the auto ripping devices which themselves can be kludgy with sometimes undesired compromises, I know of no shortcuts. I was able to do it over a long period of time as a side effort when working on PCs. Sometimes feeding in CDs one after another while doing other things, then going back a week later to edit tags. I've always used a separate folder for each album and have them as branches off of a higher level that is by artist. For classical music, I have it organized by composer, then by artist or orchestra or conductor, then by album It's worth the effort to clean up your metadata, you'll have your music everywhere you want it and with easy and swift access to everything you have. There's another corollary programs I use to make random playlists, or genre-flavored playlists or theme playlists, for focused variety. That's a topic for another thread.