The news hit today that Sears would stop selling Whirlpool branded products because they couldn’t be competitive with other brands. My guess is that Whirlpool wouldn’t cut pricing enough for sears (or wouldn’t be lenient with payment terms). At any rate, immediately after this announcement we got news from Sears that Whirlpool would still be making some Kenmore and Coldspot branded products (along with Frigidaire, GE, LG and Samsung).
Sears isn’t the only one having difficulty with Whirlpool pricing however… on the Whirlpool appliance parts side distributors are finding it increasingly hard to explain why parts with Whirlpool’s logo on the packaging cost so much more than aftermarket parts of similar quality. This also goes for Frigidaire, LG and Samsung.
The truth is, when you buy a Kenmore brand product, you can’t really be sure who made it! And, more and more, even when you do know who made it you can’t be sure where the parts for it came from! We are finding some aftermarket replacement items come from the same factory in China as the oem and, even more, some generic parts are even built better while costing less!
So if the warranty is the same, as it is for every aftermarket part A-1 Appliance Parts sells, and the quality difference is negligible (if we run into quality issues with a generic item, we don’t continue to offer it- that’s just a headache for everyone), it only makes sense to pay less!
See if your parts are available in quality aftermarket versions like ERP, Supco, and Napco at A-1 Appliance Parts. A-1 generic appliance parts