Faulty switches in electric range

[DTDerekson]

Greetings! With this being Thanksgiving, this problem has been exacerbated so before I write the company I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Five or so years ago I bought a new electric range of middle-of-the-line quality and with as few fancy features as possible (I want it to heat food, not pilot a spaceship ;-). Prior to that time, in my entire life, the only time a stove ever broke was the thermostat going bad in the oven of a VERY old stove. Stoves in my mind don't break so I figured I'd have my new one for a very long time. (I dislike posting brand names on The Eternal UseNet, so lets just say the repair guys of this brand supposedly play a lot of solitaire...)

...However, I find myself disrupting their card game. I have had to have "switches" (?) behind the burner knob controls replaced twice (one under warranty, once out of warranty to the tune of $170). What happens is a nasty sparking sound comes from behind the knob while the burner is on and sounds like something has shorted out or is getting ready to. Makes one afraid of fire so you stop using that burner. It's happened with two different burners and now the second one is going again in the same way. Looking at another $170 and no good explanation why this is happening repeatedly, it seems to me my best bet is to express my displeasure with the unit to the manufacturer and replace the entire stove with a completely different brand.

The reason I'm posting is I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something here before I register a complaint with the company. Is this normal on today's stoves? Why would a stove do this? Did they just get a batch of defective switches and now those are swirling around the industry? Is this something like my earlier post on faucet seat washers -- you just can't get good parts anymore?

Thanks for any insights you might have....

DT

[Dan O.]

DTDerekson wrote

Both switches for both burners or just one switch for one burner then one switch for a different burner??

It happens.

The switches are now made in Mexico? (which they likely are BTW)

It's possible the actual switch manufacturer (which is *not* Maytag) is or have had problems with the longivity of their products at one time or another. Moisture could also effect switch longevity if any happended to get in there (like from cleaning, etc.). There is not usually anything in the range which could cause such failures.

That's a big part of it, consumers looking for cheaper and cheaper products to purchase and/or manufacturers looking for cheaper and cheaper sources for components.

You could replace it yourself as a common replacement switch (like linked below) is less than $50. I don't know if the one shown below is compatible with your range without knowing the exact model number off it.

If you think you'll get better components on it, you are probably mistaken. There are likely 2-3 stove surface burner switch manufacturers in the whole world (4 including the maker of the switches for glass top stove elements) and all the appliance manufacture's use the same ones (with slight specification changes like shaft length, ,ounting, etc.).

Depending on the type of switch used in your model, it *may* be able to be replaced with a slightly different design switch possibly from one of the other switch manufacturers but there's no guarantee it'll absolutely last any longer.

At the very least you should probably be grateful that its electronic control didn't fail which would probably cost $170+ just for the part!!

JMO

Dan O.

- Appliance411.com

=Ð~~~~~~