The Maytag Neptune, Maytag's first front-load washer, was a good machine with one flaw: water sat in the door seal, went sour and smelled. The recall and class-action lawsuit that followed helped push an already struggling Maytag into Whirlpool's hands in 2006, and losing that mid-market competitor has cost consumers through less choice and higher prices.
The Maytag Neptune — the most expensive washer ever? I bet you thought that was clickbait. I’m here to tell you it is almost certainly true. Not because of its price tag. Because of what it cost all of us when Maytag went down — and the Neptune was likely the nail in the coffin.
When did Maytag die?
Before I tell you why, let me ask this: when did Maytag die?
A bunch of people are yelling at their screens right now. “What are you talking about? I still see Maytag. I have one. A friend has one.” It’s an illusion. Any Maytag product less than twenty years old is a Whirlpool with a Maytag badge stuck to it. If you paid a bit more for your Maytag, the Whirlpool sitting beside it — sorry, spoiler alert — was the same machine for less.
For anyone digging into the history: Maytag didn’t file Chapter 11. The company was in serious financial trouble, but Whirlpool acquired it in 2006, before any formal bankruptcy. The U.S. Department of Justice approved the merger even though it gave Whirlpool an extremely high share of the laundry market. That decision is still debated. My point isn’t the legal paperwork. It’s the economic impact.
Not clickbait. Just the facts.
What was Maytag up against?
When the Neptune — Maytag’s first front-load automatic washer — came out, Maytag was fighting Whirlpool for market share. Both companies were racing to the pricing floor, barely making enough to keep the doors open, let alone pay shareholders dividends. Pricing was the sword of choice.
I couldn’t figure it. Maytag was a solid midrange product with an excellent marketing strategy. It had recently acquired Amana and Jenn-Air, upper-midrange brands. Jenn-Air was a bit of a niche — basically a cooking-only line — but its founder was reportedly a tyrant for quality control, with products in homes and near-zero out-of-the-box failures. That should have been right in Maytag’s wheelhouse.
Except they slid cheaper products under the Amana and Jenn-Air badges and tried to live off the names at lower margins. Why not carve out a bigger middle and leave Whirlpool the low end? I really don’t know. Nobody ever came calling for my advice, so clearly they knew something I didn’t.
What was wrong with the Neptune?
I had a front-row seat. Our service company was brought on as the go-to factory servicer for the new Neptune.
As it rolled out, we came to believe it was a good product. A full-size front-load washer. Excellent cleaning, gentle on clothes. I came to think top-load washers were dead and buried — they just didn’t know it yet.
But it had one annoying flaw: the front seal. Water would sit there, go mildewy and smell bad. In some cases the seal would start to mould. Customers hated that.
We recommended leaving the door open between cycles, wiping out the seal, and occasionally pouring a little vinegar in it to cut down on the smell. In our area that worked. Our average humidity is low — chalk one up for Alberta. We had a workaround. It was still a problem.
What did Maytag say when I told them?
One day two Maytag service managers were in town and took me out for lunch to check in. That was rare. In those days, if you gave up your dinner and an evening for a service school, you might get coffee and a sandwich. Lunch in the middle of the day!
They covered the company’s concerns and expectations. They saved the best for last. “What are your impressions of the Neptune?”
The opportunity I was looking for. “It’s good,” I said, “except the front seal is a problem. A problem we have a decent workaround for, but customers really hate it.”
We had a joke back then: if you worked for Maytag, you had to bleed blue. A kind of homage to the IBM pinstripes. So you’ll understand I didn’t get the response I expected.
“Look, we really want our service companies to be dialed in on this product. If you can’t do that, we’ll find someone else who can.”
A rebuke. Nothing subtle about it.
How does a door seal sink a company?
Not long after, Maytag issued a recall. They changed the seal, and changed the control board so they could change the programming of the cycles.
For what it’s worth, I owned a Neptune pair myself, built after the recall. With basic maintenance it ran almost twenty years, and I eventually gave it away when we redid our laundry room. I was a believer. It was a good product — like most things, it needed some tweaking.
Years later, Daewoo designed a system that rinsed the gasket every wash. As long as the drain was clear, it was a total no-maintenance fix. Asko marketed the Daewoo under its own name. Then Daewoo just disappeared — strangely, the only company to solve the front-seal issue.
But before Maytag could learn from it, they were embroiled in a class-action lawsuit. They lost. Most front-load washers have had similar problems and been sued, but those companies had the economic cushion to survive. Not our heroes at Maytag.
I wondered at the time whether institutional arrogance killed the Neptune. Did all, or most, of the service managers have the same attitude as the two who came to see me? If so, the problem never reached the engineers quickly enough for them to start on a solution. I’ll never know. But I can guess.
What did it cost the rest of us?
One manufacturer operating on the edge suffers and dies. Probably deserved its fate, in most people’s minds.
But in my estimation, Maytag’s demise cost consumers billions. Whirlpool snapped up the remnants and, following Maytag’s own example, slipped poorer-quality products under the badges and mined the reputations. When I first told this story, the strategy looked like it was paying off. Whirlpool was profitable. The cracks weren’t showing yet. Today they are, and Whirlpool is a hot mess. I get into how that happened in the invisible contract. Either way, the consumer got the bill. The middle-of-the-road choice is gone. Less competition, so the consumer pays more for less product.
Maybe — just maybe — because their middle managers were too “blue” to see a concern and get it corrected.
When a company rep gives me a line that sounds like, “We’re too good to accept your critique,” I get worried. Really worried.