Mistral MFLW5

Terrible – We bought this from K-Mart on special; mistake number 1. It was their floor model but sold with full warranty. It didn't work.... control panel didn't activate the machine. We rang K-Mart who told us to ring Mistral whose main switch would answer but instruct us to an extension which just left us dangling. Back to K-Mart, and, after about three increasingly-hostile visits, they gave us "their own" phone number for the Mistral people. This worked, but all Mistral did was tell us to go through K-Mart! Well, this nonsense went on for around 5 weeks, when Mistral finally decided to send someone. The repairman couldn't even get the back off the machine... said he's never seen screws like this. So he went away, and it's back onto Mistral again.

This time they were a bit nicer... only about three weeks of phone calls that left you dangling, and they offered to replace the machine. They did, too, even though the one they sent us had been dropped and had quite-severe cabinet damage. However, we'd been without a washing machine for so long (including over Christmas) that we accepted it gratefully. They didn't take away the old one, so now we had two Mistrals.

We contacted them about the cabinet damage.... usual dangling, and you had to press an extension for something other than the washing machine extension before anyone would answe. The lady said she would make a note of this and see what could be done. That turned out to be nothing; we never heard from Mistral again, but at least we could do our washing!

But lately it's been playing up and it's out of warranty. We had two expensive service calls, but the repairman couldn't get it up and running for more than half an hour. We're about to buy a new machine. NOt a third Mistral!

We've sworn off anything with the Mistral name on it, and we're not too keen on K-Mart for stocking stuff of dubious quality... the place is almost deserted nowadays, and I think they've probably brought that on themselves. It was fairly cheap, like most K-Mart products It worked like something fairly cheap -- like most K-Mart products. Didn't last long, serviceman called it "rubbish", Mistral slow to act.