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Sears Service…prepare to wait a long time. Kenmore 17692 Built in Dishwasher The dishwasher itself has been wonderful, until the breakdown (my issues wi...

Well worth the money! Bosch Evolution¿ 300 SHE42L1 Built in Dishwasher I've had my Bosch stainless steel dishwasher for a year now, and I LOVE it!...

Purchase: Wife and I purchased this late last Winter, so I’m guessing we’ve been using it for about 5 months. Bought because of all the CR propaganda rating it a top buy and regret it.

Sound: The machine is quiet, audable, but still quiet enough to have a conversation around.

Install: Straight forward. Better then expected.

Cleaning: Cutlery was very good. Everything else was no better then the 25 year old Kenmore it replaced, some things worse (pots and pans, despite the turbozone, were a disappointment).

Bottom rack design: Pretty much what I expected. Straight forward. Knife rack is a nice touch. Cutlery was … typical. Wish someone would come up with a better idea for washing baby bottle nipples, etc.

Top rack design: Absolutely ridiculous and actually the reason I’m writing the review at the moment. There is nothing nice to say about the top rack design. The bottom of the rack is so uneven nothing sits stable. Those little flip down cup things the salesman pitchs as a feature, just don’t work in actual practice. I’m always fighting with loading the top rack. Tonight I was ‘this close’ to smashing the whole thing to smithereens I was so angry with it. Only reason I didn’t was my wife walked in on me as I was about to swing at it. The top rack on this machine is an absolute deal breaker.

Drying: What drying. The only things that will dry in this thing are your ceramic dishes and metal pots. If you’ve got tupperware, plastic baby bottles, or those little disposable ziplock/noname plastic containers that are so popular, forget it, no amount of heated drying is gonna dry them cause the machine does a terrible job of getting the steam out. The reason I think that that is unreasonable is that my 25 year old Kenmore had no problem with drying those items.

Odour: We have a reoccuring odour problem. We’ll open the dishwasher in the morning and get the stink of rotten vegitables. You have to wonder how sanitary that is. Messages on the forums will tell you this is your water. I say, if it was my water how come I never had this problem with my old dishwasher. I had that thing since I moved in seven years ago and it was probably 15-20 years old then. I never cleaned it, not once. It never smelled. Its not the water. So anyway, to get rid of the smell you do an empty run with a cup of vinegar in the water. It works, but I shouldn’t have to do it, period.

Thoughts:

If I were to do it again I’d box up a typical ‘top rack’ (glasses, tupperware, baby bottles, etc) load in a box and take it with me to the store. Load up a handful of different brand names. See which fits your needs best. Bottom racks are pretty common, you could probably get away with checking the top rack only.

The fact is I highly doubt that there is a lot of difference between the different manufacturers these days. The fact is the push to become ‘more power efficient’ and ‘greener’ using less water has compromised what anyone having used an older machine is used too. In the old days top racks were designed for the ‘typical’ glass, now they’ve been compromised by making them suitable for any range of item you might load up there but in doing so has become mediocre at best for almost everything. Is Kenmore the only mfg guilty of this? Absolutely not.

This goes for the odour thing too. In researching a resolution for the issue I found many consumers complaining of the same issue with all kinds of manufacturers.

In doing it again, I’d look for the cheapest with nylon racks, and pay maybe, 50-75 dollars more for a quieter version. Beyond that all the bells and whistles of the 13742 have been so thoroughly disappointing I can’t recommend anyone pay a premium for them. Only features worth paying additional would be nylon racks and sound proofing.

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