Maytag vs Whirlpool dishwashers: an incident-report comparison

What this Maytag vs Whirlpool comparison is based on#

Every component that appears in one of these records appears in the other. Nothing here is characteristic of one brand and absent from the other; the two columns name the same parts, in nearly the same order, and differ only in how much weight each gives them.

The evidence is 228 CPSC SaferProducts filings naming a component on a Maytag [dishwasher](/blog/repair-or-replace-dishwasher) and 137 doing the same for a Whirlpool, both made between 2011 and 2026. Each figure is a share of its own record.

One record with two subjects, one with a single subject#

Maytag's top two rows are close: the control board at 25%, which is 57 filings, and the heating element at 23%, which is 52. Wiring or the power cord follows at 13%. Three components, none of them dominant, with the first two separated by a handful of reports.

Whirlpool's record has no such balance. The control board takes 49% — 67 filings — and its second row, the heating element, is 9%. The leader there holds nearly half the column, and the drop to second place is steep.

What the board's share costs the rest of the Whirlpool column#

That steepness is worth stating as a property of the column rather than as a fact about the machine. When one row takes nearly half a record, everything else is competing for what remains, so a component can be genuinely well represented in absolute terms and still read as small.

Wiring or the power cord is the clearest case. It is 8% of the Whirlpool record and 13% of the Maytag one — a 5-point gap — but in counts it is 11 filings against 29. The share gap and the count gap tell slightly different stories, and both are true.

The gaps, and the rows that show none#

The control board separates the two records by 24 points, toward Whirlpool. The heating element separates them by 14, toward Maytag. Those are the two real differences on the page, and both rest on dozens of filings on each side.

Below them the records converge. The motor is 3% for Maytag against 4% for Whirlpool, six filings each, which the table marks as one-report noise. The thermostat or sensor is 1% in both columns, recorded as no measured difference.

None of it produces a ranking. Both columns count filings rather than machines, no public source states how many dishwashers of either brand are in service, and the database over-represents incidents with a safety dimension — which lifts the heating-element row in both columns before any difference between the brands appears. What the page supports is two repair priors: for a Whirlpool, the board first by a wide margin; for a Maytag, the board and heat in nearly equal measure with wiring a real third.

Maytag vs Whirlpool dishwashers: what the reports mention#

Both columns are shares of their own corpus, and the corpora differ in size. Maytag: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Maytag dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=228. Whirlpool: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Whirlpool dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=137. A difference no larger than one report on either side is marked "within one-report noise".

About the corpus: these are CPSC SaferProducts reports — incidents someone chose to report, not units sold — so the shares on this page are shares of the reports and never a failure rate. The corpus is weighted toward safety events: 12,007 of its 20,581 records (58%) are fire, smoke, burn or melt reports, which over-represents the components that burn and under-represents the ones that merely stop working.

Maytag dishwashers: the reported component split#

Maytag dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Maytag dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=228.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

Whirlpool dishwashers: the reported component split#

Whirlpool dishwashers — every share in this table is a share of: CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Whirlpool dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=137.

Shares of reports, not failure rates — see the corpus note above.

How to use these numbers#

What this comparison can settle: which components the reported incidents of each brand actually concentrate on, for this appliance. What it cannot settle: which brand fails more often. That would need units sold, and no public source states it. Use the component split to plan for the repair each brand is most reported for, not to rank the two.