A friend of mine's Kenmore washer of only a few years died, so he did some research and found this video:
Why My Kenmore Washer Died
It's just a few minutes of this guy who obviously likes to take things apart and knows how things work. His washer died and he shows that it has at least two design flaws that were deliberately manufactured in the washer to make sure it died over time, just past the 5 year warranty, which his did. It's fucking sinister as hell and has put me off the Kenmore brand for life.
Kenmore used to be the gold standard -- I remember everyone I knew would go for Kenmore, because it was a high quality brand. But I agree that they are not what they used to me. I'll have to go look at that film.
The sad thing is that I can't even dismiss the guy as a crackpot because corporations do this stuff every day.
My MIL bought a Kenmore refrigerator about a year ago. A few days after she got it, it konked out. Ruined hundreds of dollars worth of food. Sears replaced it but did not pay for the food claims. She's had 5 other service calls in the past year because they can't figure out how to keep water from leaking from it.
She and DH went to see the store manager a couple of weeks ago. They are still doing battle to get the thing replaced.
Unfortunately, DH and I bought a Kenmore fridge a couple of years ago, back when I thought they were still a reputable company. Last year, the flap for the ice dispenser failed. There's a tiny spring inside that just snapped for no reason whatsoever, and then the flap just sort of hung open, which let warm air inside the freezer to some disastrous results. I thought this was suspicious because I almost NEVER use the ice dispenser. I'd say up until that point, it may have been used maybe 10 times in a year, if that, so the cause of the breakage could not be linked to overuse. So I did some research and found out that the spring used to make the flap hold in place pretty much always fails, no matter what, and most often the Sears repair person will want to replace the entire freezer door at a cost of a few hundred dollars, all because of a tiny spring manufactured to fail.
We bought it at the Navy Exchange, not Sears, and we also bought a two-year warranty. So the Navy Exchange people sent a local fridge repair guy out, and he scratched his head for a few hours over it. Then he decided to order a part and came back a week later and fixed it, at no cost because of the warranty. Since it was still under warranty, he wasn't advised to replace the entire freezer door at a huge cost, he just replaced the spring.
Kenmore is to be avoided at all costs.