Hotpoint Aquarius WMA34P Review

Overall Rating

Price, availability

Flooding if you use hot wash too often, unreliable spare parts

I bought this machine for my elderly parents and was delighted.

After a few months my mother called to say that with the door open and the machine unplugged, hot water was still coming into the drum at a steady trickle.

I went round and sure enough I found my mother baling the hot water out of the drum just before it spilled out of the door. I shut the door and went to find the necessary off tap that, like most installations, it is buried at the back of the kitchen cupboard and practically immovable.

My mother was in a panic, mostly concerned about what would have happened if they had been out when this occurred.

I phoned Comet who sent an engineer around. This guy intitially criticised my mother for being too slow and not turning off the water! This prompted a full and frank exchange of views.

He first blamed sediment from the cold water tank blocking a valve. My parents live a block of flats with riser mains, they don't have a header tank and I was quick to tell him (my parents, of course, wouldn't have known better).

Next he tried to blame a self boring tap connector for releasing swarf into the valve - wrong again, its a proper soldered joint which has been in place for maybe 15 years (again my parents wouldn't have known better).

He replaced the failed valve and left - muttering.

Two months later the machine repeated the exercise, and a small flood resulted. My mother is now too scared to leave the machine unattended and is almost behaving obsessively about switching off the water, the power and shutting the door before even the shortest trip out. If she is out for more than an hour, she admits to being worried about what she is going to find on her return.

A different engineer called round. This one explained that the problem is a soft metal component in the valve that doesn't expand properly with the hot water intake. It wears away and he showed us a very small trace of grit-like metal that this produces and that, eventually, would stop the valve turning. He added that he's always replacing them in Hotpoint machines, so much so that he doesn't have to get them on order (like most machine parts) he carries his own stock.

I asked if anyone had reported the fault to Hotpoint, he shrugged his shoulders and said he used to, but has given up.

I wrote to Hotpoint who said that they had sold the licence to Comet for warranty purposes. It took 4 letters for them to realise that I was trying to tell them of a possible production fault.

Once they had realised this they went on the defensive and said that no such flaw had ever been reported by anyone else. I replied that, with Comet taking the fallout by their licence obligations, Hotpoint would hardly ever get the chance to be told.

In response to this I got an amazing letter telling me that protracted correspondence would not resolve the issue and that all further letters would have to be directed to Comet!

Comet's solution is to point out that this machine's instruction book does tell you to switch the incoming water supply off when its not in use.

Comet offered extended warranty (at a price) to ensure that each time the valve neded replacing my parents could get this done under warranty.

The only practical advice was to lower the temperature of the hot water (which would affect the hot water across the whole property) and only use low temperature wash cycles - which effectively removes half of the features of the machine !

Incidentally, the showroom person suggested keeping the door permanently closed as a precaution - this will cause the corrosion within the drum in the long run - it will also get you wet feet if you're not going to get on your hands and knees to see if the water has come into the drum and just started lapping over the door opening below the glass 'bowl' of the door. You can bet your bottom dollar, the day you don't check, is the day it will happen.

I'm guessing that the majority of people wouldn't be using the A cycle so much, but my mother does and she should be able to !

I can't honestly fault the service, or the other features of this machine - but the inbuilt risk of flooding when the hotter wash cycles are used frequently has spoiled the whole experience