We had a front loader many years ago, and vowed to never buy one again. It would take hours to do a wash, and it would twist our clothes into knots. (And in the UK we had a model that couldn't do cold washes... all the dyes in our non-colour fast clothes ran and they all eventually turned the same muddy colour.) We've never had any problems with any of our top loaders.

But from this discussion, it looks like for every problem someone has with a machine, another person has a machine (of the same type) without that problem.

I guess the answer is shop around with an open mind, and buyer beware.