Candy WashPass is a smart subscription service for your laundry

Candy is aiming to take the hassle out of managing your washing machine with its new WashPass subscription service. Available now, WashPass bundles everything you need to wash your clothes into a monthly fee.

After an upfront payment of £69, you then pay £6.90 per month plus 80p per wash. This gets you a 9kg Wi-Fi-connected washing machine (normal price more than £500) along with servicing for the life of your subscription, plus all the detergent that you need to clean your clothes.

Having a Wi-Fi-connected washing machine lets you control it using Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, but it also lets the washing machine re-order detergents as they’re used up. It’s not just any old detergent that you get, either. For WashPass, Candy has created disaggregated ingredients installed in four bottles in the front of the machine.

This lets the washing machine inject the right dosage of each ingredient at the right time for each washing cycle. According to the company, this reduces waste but also improves washing quality, with up to 70% better results.

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Due to the special detergent, the provided washing machine can’t be used with regular detergent. Nor can you exclude fabric softener from the mix, which could be a deal-breaker for those allergic to it. Candy has said that it may develop a no-softener version of the system in future if there’s the demand for it. At the least, there should be an option for discarding softener from a clean: microfibre cloths, for example, shouldn’t be washed with softener.

In order to charge you the 80p per wash, your washing machine must stay connected to Wi-Fi. You can run up to five washes without the machine connected, but once this limit has been hit the washing machine will stop working until it’s reconnected to your account.

Candy can also remotely lock the washing machine if you stop paying for your subscription. If you cancel your subscription, there’s a £99 early release charge if you’ve not had WashPass for three years. Once cancelled, Candy can either collect the machine and refurbish it, or sell it to you, unlocking it for regular use.

Price-wise, the service doesn’t appear to be bad value. For the monthly fee, it would take just over six years before you’ve paid more than the washing machine is worth, then 80p per wash to cover servicing and detergent seems pretty fair.

There are currently only 500 WashPass subscriptions available today, although we’d expect a wider roll-out if this service is successful.