I worked for Norge in the early 60's, as a techy in the engineering lab, for two years. Norge appliances had a very good reputation for quality. The first year working there, the engineers would draw up some change and come waltzing into the lab crowing about saving a nickel or dime on a part. We would have the part made and install it on an existing washer or dryer or air conditioner. It would test OK. At the end of the model year, the new appliances were manufactured using all the changes. I spent the second year at Norge working at the end of the production line, trying to get the new models to even stand up under their own weight. Seems that when ALL the changes were applied, too much cheapening resulted. Some "quick fixes" were implemented, and the appliances were sent out to the marketplace. (Including Montgomery Ward, who dropped Norge that same year.)

If anyone wonders why the maker of those wonderful, high-quality Norge appliances no longer is in business, I assume it is because their products finally were revealed for what they had become.

My position: We cannot assume that because an appliance has been well-made in the past, that it will be so in the future. And the manufacturers surely are not going to tell us about the difference. We need to communicate, just like CPanther did in the previous message, about changes in quality as they become apparent.

Maytag's excessive cost cutting in their final years all but destroyed their once-stellar rep for reliability. Someone thought they could save a few cents by eliminating the seal around the rinse agent dispenser in their dishwasher doors; instead, it allowed the stuff to leak out and start fires, prompting a costly recall. And their new line of front-load washing machines was disastrously unreliable, worst by a wide margin in CR's surveys, and prompted a class-action lawsuit. Even all of the cheapening couldn't make Maytag's inefficient factories profitable, so their refrigerator and laundry facilities were shut down. The "Maytag" badge lives on for now, but mostly on rebranded Whirlpool products. Although they own the rights to the name, I don't think they're using the Norge brand at all anymore, although i still see Norge-branded commercial Laundromats.