Does anybody have experience with “LaundryMate Balls”?
These are a substitute for laundry detergents and according to a friend who uses them, they get the clothes clean and remove all BO stinky odours and leave NO GHASTLY LAUNDRY PRODUCT SMELL in the clothes after washing.
My friend purchased one of these and swears by it and it has lasted over a year so far. The only thing they can’t clean out of the clothes is oil and grease stains. And because it leaves no residue in the clothing it doesn’t need a rinse cycle.
So it saves water and expensive laundry detergent.
But does it work?
I’m suspicious.
But also curious as I detest laundry product smells in clothing.
The spiel on the website says the LaundryMate washing ball contains “electronic ceramic beads” ; anti bacterial, anti chlorine, alkaline, “Far Infrared Ray (FIR)” and fragrance beads.
The maker says they no longer put fragrance beads into the product and my friend who uses the ball says it leaves no fragrance in the clothes, and as I can’t smell any nasty laundry product fragrance in her clothes I accept this as true.
But two of the claimed ingredients:-
electronic ceramic beads
Far Infrared Ray beads
push my bollocks detector meter right up into the red zone!!
Does anybody have knowledge or experience with this product - positive or negative?
It depends if you are a believer of not. Choice has reviewed laundry balls in the past and even awarded one a shonky:
Choice found that they wash about as well as water…so you don’t need to buy a special and expensive ball to get the same results - just use water to wash your clothes.
According to Choice studies there are some cleansers that are no better than water. There is a review here.
What is an electronic ceramic bead? What does it do?
Your house is filled with Far Infra Red Rays, if these clean your clothes you don’t need special balls or even a washing machine, leaving clothes hanging in the closet bathed in those wonderous rays will get them clean.
The clincher is none of the vendors actually do any testing and publish the results.
Thank you
So it seems it’s a bunch of bollocks.
I suspect if these things really worked, the big wigs from the big detergent companies would have quickly bought up the rights and patents and shelved them in order to kill any competition. The same thing which I believe happened to the Dead End Cockroach Mats reviewed by Choice about 30 years ago!
I’m with you on that. I check laundry powder in the supermarket by (a) only considering powders that are in cardboard boxes, not plastic, so that the smell will be detectable without opening the pack; and (b) subject it to a sniff test.
It’s difficult to find any that have had no odourisers added, but light, unaggressive odours can be tolerable.
However, don’t assume that ‘sensitive’ washing powders are necessarily the way to go. I tried some a few years ago, thinking it’d be much like the ‘normal’ version of the same brand but with less pong. Well, less pong might have been true, but the stuff was totally unusable in a front loader even though it was marked as being for front loaders. Unlike the ‘normal’ version of the same brand, it filled the machine with foam! I didn’t take note of the odour, being too busy getting the foam out of the machine.
The Costco laundry powder is quite innocuous, if you live close enough to a Costco this product may be of interest. It is marketed as being for top loaders but we just quarter to halve the dose depending on soiling for the front loader load.
Thanks Grahroll
I was not even aware that Costco was in the land of Oz. I thought it was American!
I’m in a country area and don’t think I’ve heard of a Costco near my neck of the woods.
I’ve been using Omo Sensitive POWDER for years now. I don’t have any problems with it but it is expensive!
BTW the Omo Sensitive LIQUID is a different kettle of fish and as someone else pointed out, it does contain a heavy fragrance of some sort.
Surf used to make “Surf Sensitive” which was the equal of Omo Sensitive and I tried that without problems but it seems to have gone off the market.
Coles also marketed a special “sensitive” powder and again it was free of fragrances and laundromat stench. But Coles withdrew it from sale about a year ago - perhaps because it was not profitable?
Aldi also chipped in with their version of “sensitve” powder and I bought a packet and it was also quite OK, so when it came on special some time later, I bought two more packets - but alas, something had gone awry in the production process in the meantime and it was indeed fragranced so I wrote to Aldi complaining and that simply told me I was wrong.
So I ended up giving away the two fragranced boxes of non fragranced powder.
Perhaps something went wrong during the manufacturing process and some fragrant contamination got in?
I’ve had this happen with other products which are normally fragrance free, and as usual when I complain to the vendor they tell me I am wrong.
Hah!
Ah yes this is just like the petrol car makers who bought up the water powered car and killed it the same way. I know this for sure because you don’t see water powered cars any more. There is a hidden spot out in the western desert where they keep them behind a big chain link fence, it’s called Area #999. Vicious trained dingos patrol the enclosure.
Interesting!
When I click on your “fragrant free detergent” it takes me to my BigW app and shows me “DUO clean and sensitive” detergent and at $17 for a 5kg box it’s waayyyy cheaper than OMO Sensitive!
Thank you.
I will investigate this item.
But the conspiracy theorists say because there isn’t any evidence it didn’t happen, it supports their theories that it did.
Yes, which is a strong indicator of why they don’t work. The other key give away is they are mostly sold online and advertised through social media (noting that there are possibly some peddling the sham product at markets).
There are many products which fit the same mojo, because if they sold in-store they are more likely to be caught out under the ACL for making misleading claims. Other similar products are fuel savers, plug in power savers and the lift goes on.
Prior to discounting ALL large companies ‘buying up’ innovative small ones and essentially burying their products or creatively relegating them to history, the experience of one Ted Pitchard might be worth reviewing. It devolved to a ‘he said’ and all the claims are difficult to prove but a summary is
Ted Pritchard built a ‘stream powered’ car - to me it resembled a thermoblock boiler.
He had a demo that was taken to the US for evaluation by the US auto makers.
They told him he just needed to make ‘this improvement and that change’ using his own capital before they would license it.
When he did it all they offered him a pittance for a license, that bankrupted him.
I met Ted when he was trying to get enough capital to resurrect his company in 2002; he heard our American accents and came over asking if we might be venture capitalists of knew any.
My friend bought the washing ball at a market!
Same place where they flogg crystals with magical properties, x-ray specs, tarot cards and the like!
And anything sold via so called “direct marketing” aka mail order, should be considered suspect.
“Fuel savers” - ahh yes. Magnets that you attach to the car fuel lines to align the petrol molecules all in the same direction resulting in a fuel savingl!!
The “Mythbusters” put some of these alleged “fuel savers” to the test. Most of them made NO difference to fuel consumption but 1 or 2 actually increased fuel consumption.
