Product review (1 stars): Bloodlust 101
When we were renting, my wife and I were cursed with the Whirlpool WTW4950XW as our apartment's washing machine.  Like a zombie locked tenuously in a basement, the Whirlpool under the stairs became the epicenter of an irrational, pervasive fear in our daily lives.

My friends, you will NEVER find greater manufactured aggravation in life than the Whirlpool WTW4950XW.  I tell you now, run from it.  It will end your world as you know it.  It will murder your brother and impregnate your daughters.  It is the bringer of the apocalypse.

The first circle: Ruined laundry.  Whirlpool's official instructions insist upon adding the detergent first, before laundry or water.  If you are fool enough to fall for this, the first trap, your clothes will emerge with patches of tiny bleached-out specks.  How does this happen with regular old powder detergent, without a drop of bleach?

The washer takes an absolute age to do anything, but none so excruciatingly long as filling the cylinder with water.  By insane design, the computer constantly alternates between the hot and cold solenoids, never allowing flow from both hoses simultaneously.

Because it takes so long to begin agitation, your laundry stays in direct contact with undiluted detergent for a VERY long while, resulting in the tiny discolored spots.  Several brand-new shirts and slacks were ruined before I could deduce this problem.  The only safe options are to dilute your detergent in hot water beforehand, or remember to come back 15 minutes after you've started the cycle to add detergent, after it has filled.

Leading us to the second feature.  High efficiency washers use less water!  Hurray!  But if you want your laundry to actually touch the water, let alone stand a chance at being cleaned, you'll learn that you must cut back DRASTICALLY on the load size.  Where one week's whites might constitute one or two loads in your previous washer, you must now divide it into two to four loads.  Fail in this caution, and several articles will come out as bone-dry as the moment they went in, leaving serious doubt as to how well the remainder could have possibly been cleaned.

Is this really more efficient, by the way?  Are we not mindless sheep for believing this is somehow greater efficiency than our trusty old agitator-style machines?

Oh, my agitator washer.  How I miss you.  Remember the good old days, when I'd begin whites on a six minute wash, leaving the lid open?  Without one more word from me, you'd automatically halt the works at the right moment, until I returned to add the chlorine bleach and reset the timer.

Those days are long behind us, for Whirlpool has favored us with another super-handy feature.  The LOCKING LID.  Ohhh the locking lid.  Folks, I hated this thing so freakin bad--and you will too--that as I lay dying one day, I am sure to spend my final breath to curse it.

On the WTW4950XW, the locking lid controls all.  Not only is it mandatory for EVERY SINGLE move the washer makes.  Not only does it make it impossible to change the load once it's begun.  The locking lid also decides if & when you'll ever see your laundry again.  And you had just better play ball with the kidnappers, boy-o, or else!

Suppose you have to cancel the wash cycle.  Maybe you didn't run back to add detergent or bleach in time.  Maybe you had to add (or more likely take out) some items.  So you hold down the start button and cancel the cycle.  The washer should just empty and reset.

Enter the real terror.  The cycle halts.  The machine sits there motionless.  A little red "Lid Locked" LED blinks.  The machine won't empty.  Every combination of button push & dial turn produces absolutely no effect.

Won't spin.  Won't unlock.  Won't resume the wash.  Won't do ANYTHING but flash "Lid Locked".  Taunting you.  Mocking you.  Yeah, keep trying your tricks.  I will unlock the lid when I'm good and ready!  Sucker.

So you unplug the machine to kill the computer and reset the machine.  That's got to work, right?  Plug it back in.

Nope.  Lid Locked!  Lid Locked!  All your laundry are belong to us.

Many times I stood enraged before this d4mned machine.  Boiling and seething and spitting, gripping a nine-pound sledge hammer in my claws.  Rearing back and forth on the brink of furious unleash, barely restraining an orgy of carnage upon this creation of pure evil.  Why not lay waste to the horrible thing once and for all, and the world will a better place for it?

The manufacturers hide, predictably, behind the excuse of safety.  The extraction cycle spins at such a high rpm, the lid must be kept locked at all times (even during the 90% of the cycle that's not high-rpm extraction).

Such forced safety interlocks are necessary for some; in this example, for a people who have completely forsaken logical thought.  And brother believe you me, I ought to know!  On numerous occasions I have had both my arms horribly mangled by uncontrollably thrusting them into an agitator spinning at full throttle.  Legs too!

Thank goodness we live in a day and age where a washing machine can decide what's best for us.  Bless you, Whirlpool!  We simple folk have grown too hopelessly idiotic to determine for ourselves how to use our own appliances.  How much water to add, when to add our cleaning agents, when we should access our laundry...these gravely momentous decisions cannot be entrusted to sentient minds.  Best to let the machine decide, and we shall scurry to accomodate its whim.

In fact, the washing machine no longer serves us; we serve it.  You!  Lowly cretinous subjects!  Bring gifts of sacrifice to the altar and pay tribute to the all-knowing, the mighty, the fearsome, Whirlpool the Terrible!

Are you one who seeks this brand of aggravation?  Have you knocked to the canvas all of life's ordinary problems, and you're left craving more?  Do you desire insanely absurd challenge in a commonplace task like laundering?  Add to cart.  NOW!  WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?  DO IT NOW!

Otherwise, the WTW4950XW should only be employed by sociologists researching a specific study about provoking human bloodlust.

And Whirlpool should open up a training camp for assassins, as proven industry leaders of transforming reasonably-mannered sane people into bloodthirsty lunatics bent on destruction.

But don't take my word for it.  Try the diabolical WTW4950XW for yourself, and unwittingly join Whirlpool's own half-crazed army of Manchurian candidates.  Hey, if I were on your jury, I for one would vote for acquittal.

Thank you for reading.