By dpowsner on 25th Apr 2008
dpowsner's Ratings| Owned Product For: | More than 1 year |
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| Special Features | Not supplied |
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| Ease of Use | 7/10  |
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| Durability | 1/10 |
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| Style | 10/10 |
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| Service & Support | 1/10 |
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| Value for money | 2/10 |
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| Overall value | 2/10 |
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 dpowsner's recommendation |
Good Points
Looks good.
Bad Points
Unreliable. Poor customer support. Difficult to service. Racks do not permit efficient loading of dishes.
General Comments
We are on our second Fisher Paykel dishwasher: the company had to replace the first one after two terrible years of operation. Now, in our third year of operation of the replacement unit -- indeed, just two weeks out after the warranty on it expired -- the top drawer has completely failed. As the man who came out to service unit (and whom Fisher Paykel recommended) told us: "gosh: you'll probably have to replace every part except for the tub itself." We estimated the cost at well over $500.
The old one, not only was said to be prone to failure (ours was not working for 6 out of the first 18 mos. of ownership), it was said to be a nightmare to fix. That certainly jives with the off-the-cuff comments made by the service people who had come out, now, several years ago, to fix it.
The replacement unit, the so-called DD603, was said to be a somewhat more reliable product and, significantly, was said to be very easy fix. My experience bears that out. Indeed, for the three years we had the unit, it only leaked a little, it only occasionally completely failed to start or to keep running after having started, and it only occasionally locked after cycle completion, necessitating, a complete power-down to open the offending drawer. You might think even this outrageous behavior from a dishwasher . . . but, when you've got a Fisher Paykel, you've got to be happy that it runs at all.
As to ease of repair, my recommendation for the unlucky souls out their who own the DD603 is to visit http://www.fixitnow.com This is a curious little website run, apparently, by a former appliance repair man. He has loads of practical advice for those who sign up for the membership (we belonged for two years), as well as complete sets of manuals -- including those for the DD603.
Having given up on the local repair people, we used information from fixitnow.com to keep our DD603 running for the final two years of its short three-year life. The first repair we learned was how to place the unit in maintenance mode so that we could activate the water pump to remove excess drainage water that the DD603 sometimes didn't seem to want to evacuate itself. We used that procedure about once every four months during the final two years. We also used directions on the site to investigate one of the leaks that had started in the unit. And, finally, we used the directions to disassemble and reassemble the upper drawer, twice, in order to diagnose the ultimate failure: a frozen rotor.
My experience from all of these repair experience is that the DD603 should indeed be a service person's dream. It's quite modularly designed and all of the pieces come off and reassemble quite easily. We found that we could strip the unit down to the tub -- specifically, removing the wiring harness, the heater plate and the motor -- in less than 15 minutes.
You would think our repair experiences would have made it easy to get the local service companies to help in repairing the unit. Wrong. I can't quite explain it, but I have a feeling that two factors conspired against that: 1) a lack of experienced repair people with the gumption to pull these units apart, and 2) such horrendous experiences by the locals with the DD602 (and, if it existed, the DD601) as to scare them into attempting to fix any dishwasher by this company.
As to the first point, most of the repair people who came out to us were "kids" out of the local vocational tech school. Their primary skill seemed to be in dialing the Fisher Paykel service support number (using our phone) to get a walk-thru on the the repair procedure. Unfortunately, the process never worked: the support personnel didn't seem to be able to convey what was needed and/or the kids didn't seem to understand what they were being told.
As to the second point, we did have some older repair people come look at the unit. All of them would make an off-the-cuff remark to the effect ". . . these things never work and we can't fix them." I had to agree. The only true fix for our DD602 came when it was replaced by a brand new DD603.
