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Call Kurtis: Woman Says Washing Machine Is Eating Her Clothes

ROSEVILLE (CBS13) - Mary Gale spent $900 on a washing machine to clean her clothes and linens. But instead of just washing her clothes, she says it's shredding them.

Gale shows us holes in her garments—ripped up sheets, torn towels and shredded shirts

"I can show you garment after garment," she said.

The culprit she says is her LG Wave Force washing machine.

"Using this machine is like playing Russian roulette," she said.

Gale described the LG Wave Force washer as, "A medieval instrument of torture and destruction."

She says the problem started about two-and-a-half years after buying it. But two repairmen sent out by LG couldn't seem to pinpoint the problem.

Gale says that she's struggled to get any results or answers from the manufacturer and is at her wit's end.

"I'm sleeping on rags, I'm sleeping in rags, at times I'm wearing rags," she said.

Justin Paddock, Chief of the Bureau of Electronics and Appliance Repair tell us, "After two or three visits, it's time to have a conversation about replacement."

He says, if an appliance doesn't work within the warranty period, the law says the manufacturer must make a reasonable amount of attempts to fix it. If it can't be fixed and it's still under warranty the manufacture should replace it or give you your money back.

But Gale says LG refused to send anyone else out to look at the machine.

Paddock says consumers shouldn't give up, "If they refuse to come out a third time a consumer would want to take advantage of small claims court action," he said.

We contacted LG which told us in spite of the washer being nearly 18 months out of warranty, "We provided a free service call. And we were unable to identify any defect to be corrected. The customer declined to allow further troubleshooting."

That's something Gale disputes ever happened.

But after we got involved LG refunded Gale $977 the amount she paid for her washer.

She's pleased. "We expect some integrity and we expect to get what we pay for," said Gale.

Gale did one thing that almost made this impossible to resolve.

Because LG couldn't seem to fix her washer at the time, she bought a new one and had the old one hauled away. LG told us this stopped them from further analyzing the machine and finding the route of the problem, but they reimbursed her anyway.

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