Earthquake in the midwest?

Quinn ran into my bedroom the other night with this half-scared-to-death look on his face. "Something" was so loud and it vibrated the house so bad that it knocked some books off of his book shelf. ...The washing machine! OK, time to wave the white flag. We've put up with some abnormal vibration for some time now but why wait until the foundation of our house actually cracks right? Well, you see... we have Maytags. When we bought them, we felt like we were buying the best and expected to have them for decades, 3 to be exact. After all my mom and dad had their Maytag set for 30 years. Ours are still a young 14, so it can't be that bad right? Wrong. The look on the repair man's face was almost as bad as hearing that the school nurse was on the phone... "you're better off replacing it." After the initial shock and hearing myself sputtering something like... "30 years" and "14 years" and "You're telling me....?!" I've finally accepted the news. Old faithful needs to be buried. We've never had a problem with it in all 14 years but 7000+ (literally) loads later, we are told it's time to say good-bye.

Now, you might be thinking "what's the big deal?" However, those of you who know me well know that decisions like buying a major appliance (or a small camera... not to mention the agony of even bigger purchases) are HUGE to us!! We have to read all the Consumer Reports, read all the on-line reviews, compare stores for prices, talk to the sales people, our friends, our family and then go back to the Consumer Reports and start the process over again. We feel like somehow we are going to get ripped off in the end and spend too much money for a product that isn't worth it and make a bad decision.

Anyway, we've started the process. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I made a promise to Quinn.... no more late night laundry and so therefore, no more earthquakes either.

BTW... According to the Lowe's lady, most washing machines are made to last only EIGHT years now. Pathetic. (Insert big sigh)